


the house at the end of the street

by woodswit



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Halloween-themed, High School Teacher!Jon, Onesided Sansa/Gendry, Political Consultant!Sansa, Previous Sansa/Dickon, Some spooky vibes but honestly mostly tooth-rotting fluff, Tarot cards and witchcraft, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Wiccan references, autumn vibes, takes place in Princeton because why not, the minicooper returns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:14:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27122335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodswit/pseuds/woodswit
Summary: Sansa doesn't believe in magic like her Aunt Lysa does, and she has zero interest in the occult; she's only come to make sure Lysa's house doesn't get seized by the township, leaving Lysa and her two 'witch' friends homeless.After all, Sansa is a professional fixer, and she doesn't need anyone's help in saving her aunt—least of all Jon Snow's, thank you very much. He helped her once, years ago, and she does not need his help ever again.She only plans on staying for a few days—that is, until she learns what's happening to Lysa's son.—"The universe is always speaking to us, whether it be through magic, or art, or strange coincidences that we don't understand," Melisandre explains, turning over the final card, which symbolizes Sansa's future.A ragged man, mournful but curious, peers back up at her. The Fool—the card of beginnings, of spontaneity, of numberless potential paths. "The question is, Sansa Stark, are you listening to what the universe is trying to tell you?"
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 209
Kudos: 308
Collections: adventures of the mini cooper





	1. must be the season of the witch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SansaRegina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SansaRegina/gifts).



"The minute you get there, text Jon," Robb tells her.

Sansa is currently shoving a suitcase into the back of her Mini, phone trapped between her shoulder and ear. "You remember Jon, right? Sort of quiet? Dark hair? Really good at sports?"

"Vaguely," she lies, stuffing her Louis Vuitton carryon on top of another suitcase and sweating slightly from the effort. 

'Quiet' and 'dark-haired' are all just nice ways of saying that Jon was a disdainful, anti-social asshole in school who might have been goth or something. Of course she remembers him—how could she forget?

(She also remembers what he did for her all those years ago, but she would like to forget that, thanks. Thank god no one else knows.)

"Well, he teaches and coaches at the local high school, and he lives, like, right next to Aunt Lysa and her witches," Robb continues. Sansa suppresses a snort at the irony of Jon Snow, of all people, teaching high school. "He helps Aunt Lysa out all the time, fixing stuff around the house, so I'm sure he'll be happy to help you with anything that comes up. Maybe he can even help out with the ...documentation... or whatever it is you'll be doing."

His voice is sheepish, as Robb's never been one to deal with the finer details of things. But as something of a professional fixer, Sansa is _all about_ the details. 

Sansa's talent for fixing things _usually_ lends itself to saving future senators who have 'accidentally' sent dick pics, or candidates who need to find a positive way of spinning their former 'alleged' gambling problem. She's used to enormous, continent-spanning, billionaire-ruining problems. Saving Aunt Lysa's nearly-condemned house from being seized by Princeton Township seems, in comparison, almost cute.

"That's such a good idea. I'm sure he'd be really helpful," she says, because no one, not even her own brother, knows what Sansa really thinks about anything.

She finally slams the trunk shut, smooshing the edge of the Louis Vuitton against the glass. But she can't stand to have even one thing out of place, so she opens up the trunk again with a heated exhale, rearranging the luggage.

There's no need to pack so much to spend a few days at her kooky aunt's 'coven' just to look over some paperwork and argue with the township, but Aunt Lysa's house is just a pitstop on her way to the first vacation she's taken in years. She's booked a charming bed and breakfast in upstate New York, to get away from the hectic pace of her life in D.C., and Sansa has _serious plans._

She'll finally catch up on the stack of books that has been accumulating, lent to her by well-meaning friends, and she fully plans to go on long walks through the fall foliage, working her way through her ever-growing list of self-improvement podcasts. She envisions herself draped in one of her many long, stylish cashmere cardigans she bought for this trip as she lounges on the sofa and drinks wine before the fireplace and finally slows down and breathes for a moment.

(Maybe she'll even sign up for Tinder and spend an evening swiping right. It'll be just what she needs.)

She shoves the bag further into the Mini. "I absolutely will text him," she promises her brother.

(Like _hell_ she will be asking that jerk-off for help, but Robb doesn't need to know that.)

"Yeah, maybe you guys can get dinner, or something, before you leave for New York," Robb continues, optimistic as always. "I know you didn't get him in school, but you two have a lot in common. More than those assholes you normally have dinner with, anyway."

"Is Robb _still_ talking?" Arya calls from Sansa's front door.

She shoulders open Sansa's front door, carrying a box of papers that Sansa needs to go through for another client while she's up in Princeton. "Tell him to shut up. You've gotta hit the road." 

"I heard that," Robb acknowledges with a laugh. "Good luck, Sansa. I'll text you Jon's number. Seriously, give him a call when you get there." 

"I definitely will," she lies solemnly, before saying her goodbye and hanging up. Her phone vibrates right away in her pocket, likely with Jon Snow's number, as she turns back to her sister. 

"Christ, did you pack your whole apartment?" Arya wonders, shoving the box of papers into the passenger seat of the cherry-red Mini and studying Sansa's suitcases crammed into the back. "What do you even _need_ to bring? You're going to stay with a coven of witches. Can't they just whip out some spells and magic up anything you need?"

"Be nice, Arya," Arya's boyfriend Gendry says as he comes out the front door, carrying another box. His tee reveals his arms corded with muscle, tattoos snaking along his skin, as he carries the box of paperwork to the Mini. Sansa looks away, glad that she's already flushed from struggling with her suitcases. 

(Maybe she should download Tinder before she even starts driving.)

"Whatever," Arya says, setting her hands on her slim hips. "This is, like, actually really good of you to do," she adds, looking uncomfortable at having to be genuine. 

"It's on my way, and if Lysa loses the house, she'll have to come live with Mom and Dad, and you know that would be nuclear," Sansa reassures her sister. "I'm doing it for our health and safety, honestly." 

"Ugh." Arya shudders. "God, I think you're right. Remember last Thanksgiving, when Lysa _cast a spell_ to heal Bran's cold? I really thought Mom was gonna kill her." 

(If things hadn't been so tense, it would have been hilarious. Bran, ever the peacekeeper, had nasally insisted, sneezing all the while, that he really did feel 'a bit' better, as Mom ground her teeth and sliced into her turkey with precise violence, whilst everyone else quietly mainlined their wine and muttered about Lysa's train back home.)

"Well, hopefully I succeed," Sansa says at last, averting her eyes as Gendry comes to stand beside Arya and wrap an arm around her shoulders. "The deadline is Halloween, which is two weeks away, and in legal time, that's basically nothing." 

"Oh, come on. You can fix anything, Sansa," Gendry says with a laugh. Sansa's pocket vibrates again, a reminder of Robb's text, and Sansa begins to feel hassled. She's got to get out of here, away from Gendry, away from her sister's perceptive eyes. 

"We'll see," she says evasively. "Anyway, see you both in a few weeks."

She hands the spare key to her townhouse to Arya; she and Gendry will be keeping watch over Sansa's home and watering her many plants in the meantime.

"Smell you later. Don't get into an accident on your way; it'd totally ruin my day," Arya jokes, giving Sansa a one-armed hug before going back up to Sansa's front steps. 

Gendry pauses before Sansa, and there's an uncomfortable, breathless moment where neither is sure whether they ought to hug or not. She prays he will embrace her, just as she prays he will not. 

In the end, he offers her a half-smile and places a strong hand on her upper arm. She's wearing short sleeves, and his hand is cool against her warm skin. Luckily it's a humid, sunny day—despite the hopeful arrangements of pumpkins gracing everyone's front steps—so she can pin the heat on that. His eyes are as blue as the sky today; blue as an October sky.

"Drive safe," he says, and she can only nod and offer a fixed smile, before awkwardly getting into the Mini. Her skin tingles where he touched it, and she thinks, _pathetic._

Still... _You can fix anything, Sansa._

The words give her a glow as Sansa wends her way out of D.C.. But later, when the hazy silhouette of Philadelphia grows smaller in her rearview mirror, and her destination grows near, she begins to come down from her secret high. It's so pathetic to feel this way, and furthermore, it's toxic. What kind of sister falls for her sister's boyfriend? 

(She has a problem. It's fine; she's handling it. Problems are Sansa's specialty. No one can smooth out a wrinkle like Sansa, and this is just a wrinkle.)

(Maybe a few weeks, a whole lot of wine, and swiping right on Tinder will smooth out the wrinkle.)

(If it doesn't, at this point even _she_ is at a bit of a loss.) 

The day is half-gloomy. It was sunny on I-95, but now, as Sansa enters a tunnel of trees, it almost feels like dusk. After all the crowded industrialism of the interstate, this road feels ancient. _Welcome to Princeton; Settled 1638_ is printed on a decaying wooden sign, and Sansa briefly imagines settlers dressed like Puritans, barking about bibles and witches. The irony almost makes her grin. 

A shadowy stag slips through the rust-colored trees, and Sansa turns on the heat in her little Mini Cooper, shivering. It was warm and humid down in D.C., but Princeton is much further north, and here it really feels like fall. Sansa drives past faded red barns, and old white farmhouses surrounded by rolling fields; past tufty sheep grazing in fields lined with lichen-covered wooden fences. Somewhere beyond the ridge is the bucolic preciousness of Princeton University, with its Gothic spires and the brick and fieldstone facades of Palmer Square, but out here the land feels older, stranger, both more desolate and more beautiful. 

_Samhain,_ Sansa thinks suddenly, glimpsing another antlered stag, and then she shudders. She can't stand Lysa's witchcraft nonsense, but maybe out here you can't help but believe in magic. 

Sansa turns onto a street lined with ancient, gnarled sycamores. This is the street. She begins to slow, waiting for Google maps to tell her she's arrived, peering down at her phone—and shrieks as she slams on the brakes. 

A black cat hisses and darts across the street, slipping between some garbage bins. It came from an abandoned house, a dilapidated Victorian, with a sagging front porch and a circular turret with scalloped shingles dropping from it like old teeth. It must have once been beautiful, but now it looks like it would, in fact, be the perfect home for a coven of 'witches.' But it's not Lysa's house, according to Google maps. Thank goodness; she would have to consider the battle basically lost at this point, as even a strong sneeze would knock over this house. Sansa squints for the black cat before slowly rolling forward again, trying not to think of how a black cat has crossed her path. 

(It's fine. It's fine! She's not superstitious.)

The rest of the street is tidy, suburban, and notably un-witchy. Most houses boast some sort of fall decoration—clutches of pumpkins on the porch steps, or scarecrows tacked to the mailbox—and the neighbors have judiciously set out their garbage and recycling bins. One of these houses belongs to Jon Snow, but if he's anything like what he was as a teenager, Sansa can only picture him living in that abandoned Victorian, sitting in the damp dark and listening to his death metal and rolling his eyes at her. 

(Even after becoming quarterback of the football team at their high school, a plot twist that literally no one but Robb saw coming, Jon remained surly and disinterested in the rest of the world, only befriending a small group and sticking with them.) 

(They barely interacted, except for that one time he did her a favor, but she's still embarrassed about that, so she won't think about it. She has more important things to think about—like saving her Aunt Lysa's house.)

(And she will absolutely not be accepting any more favors from Jon Snow, that's for sure.)

"You have arrived," the cool, slightly condescending female voice of Google maps informs her.

And here it is. At the very end of the street stands the old white carpenter-Gothic house, and, just as Mom warned, it looks exactly like the residence of three crazy old women who call themselves witches. 

Dozens of wind chimes spin and catch the light on the sunken porch, making a clanging, atonal racket that is more suited to the ominous soundtrack of an asylum than a pleasant fall afternoon on the porch. The lawn's been cut recently—likely evidence of Jon Snow—but the overgrown garden needs an overhaul, not just a weeding, and ivy creeps over the front wall, so that the grimy windows peer out from the overgrowth like eyes from beneath bushy brows. An advertisement for a psychic business has been stuck into the lawn, and Sansa remembers that Lysa's friend, Melisandre, is the only one of their 'coven' who has a job, a little psychic business located in Palmer Square that, each month, is on the brink of liquidation. 

The house looks like a firetrap, like a rat's nest. Even from here, Sansa can see junk crowded onto the porch: an old mini-fridge turning yellow in the elements; sagging cardboard boxes full of magazines and newspaper that are undoubtedly soaked and filled with mold; a bicycle that Sansa cannot possibly imagine Lysa even being able to mount. 

As Sansa puts the Mini in park, a gutter falls off the side porch with a clang. 

Three days, Sansa reminds herself. She'll only be here for three days, and then she'll move on to her much-needed vacation, which is absolutely a vacation and _not_ self-imposed solitary isolation in the hopes of killing her own secret feelings. She's got three days to accomplish everything she needs to save this house, to save her aunt's livelihood; if she doesn't succeed, Lysa and her two housemates will be homeless by Halloween. _Samhain_ , she thinks again reluctantly, and feels a burst of impatience. She's already annoyed with her aunt's antics and she hasn't even spoken to her yet. 

(But at the same time there's a soft sweet hidden part of her that cannot help but try and help others; there is a gentle part of her that looks upon the ruined house and sees people who deserve love, not disdain, and has to stop herself from giving it.)

So she smooths her hair—she never lets her hair out of its sleek bun—and reapplies her don't-fuck-with-me red lipstick, and gets out of the Mini. She checks her phone, ignores the text with Jon Snow's number, slings her designer purse over her shoulder, and steels herself. 

It's time to save some witches. 


	2. bell book and candle

"Hello?" 

Sansa raps again smartly on the screen door, as the doorbell doesn't seem to be functioning. "Hello?" she calls again.

Even from out here on the porch, the scent of incense is thick, and it tickles the back of her throat like a bad cologne. A dull red glow peers through the yellowed curtains in the front room, making Sansa think of a boudoir or a brothel, but the windows are too smudged, and the gauze of the curtains too opaque, to tell if anyone is home. Sansa only notices now that an animal skull—perhaps a deer—sits, forgotten, on the seat of the old broken bicycle. 

(Where the _hell_ did Lysa get that, and _why_ does she have it?)

Sansa raps again on the door, and at last, she hears footsteps on the other side of the door. The door swings open to reveal a striking woman with henna-dyed red hair that falls to her waist, and a smokey eye that looks harsh on her skin. She wears an elaborate, gothic choker at her throat, with a black bat splayed across the hollow of her throat that has a large, cracked red stone between its wings, and a tight red dress that is pilled from too many cycles in the dryer. 

"Sansa Stark," she greets in a throaty, seductive voice. "We've been expecting you." 

( _Here we go_ , Sansa thinks, though her smile betrays nothing.)

"Yes, because I called the house this morning," Sansa reminds the woman as politely as she can. The woman smirks, swinging the screen door open as her large eyes rove over Sansa's sleek bun, her crisp pencil skirt, her designer bag, her Jimmy Choos. 

"Not a hair out of place," she observes dreamily, as someone comes into the foyer behind her. "A love block, for certain; you were right, Lysa. One of the worst I've seen in years. Maybe ever." 

"Um. Excuse me?" Sansa asks, starting to feel a little annoyed, just as her aunt sidles up behind the red woman. 

Lysa has grown heavier since Sansa saw her at Thanksgiving last year, and Sansa feels bad for noticing it; on the other hand, she has a joyful glow that Sansa's never seen before on her normally sallow, beaky face. She's even smiling, which is unusual for her. She's wearing jeans and a flowered top with a horrible velvet patterned kimono draped over top, and swaths of glittering, mismatched beaded necklaces that clink like a Christmas tree when she moves. Her auburn hair is streaked with grey, and nearly as long as the other woman's, and in desperate need of a cut and some highlights (in Sansa's humble opinion).

"Just a love block. I had my suspicions, what with how you seemed last Thanksgiving. It's not terminal," she reassures Sansa, pushing past the other woman to envelop Sansa in a hug that is ripe with incense. 

"I could likely remove that block in two weeks, given the proper concoctions—" the other woman begins ponderously, large eyes roving over Sansa eagerly.

"—Oh, I'm only going to be here for a few days—" Sansa protests, but Lysa is already leading her into the cramped foyer. 

"This is Melisandre," Lysa continues, as though Sansa hasn't spoken. "She's a genius of a witch, truly. I owe everything of my practice to her. I truly don't know where I'd be without her."

"One can never know _all_ the possibilities that the universe offers to us," Melisandre remarks. 

(Arya would have something very snarky to say to these women. It's a good thing she's not here.)

The foyer smells strongly of cats, and the wallpaper (patterned with clocks) is stained and curling away from the ceiling. A large, broken grandfather clock leans against a wall, and from the darkness of the top of the stairs, three pairs of glowing eyes look down at Sansa disdainfully. Somewhere, Enya is playing. "Come in, come in. Let me get you some tea. You'll want to take those off, I imagine," Lysa adds, glancing at Sansa's stilettos. "How did you ever manage to drive in those?"

"A lot of practice," Sansa says gamely. "Listen, I'd really like to go to the township's administrative offices before they close for the day, and it's already three o'clock—can I see the papers they sent you?" 

"Weapons," Melisandre proclaims, staring at the Jimmy Choos. "Weapons and armor. You are never without your weapons, are you, Sansa Stark?" 

The smell of cats, incense, and, mysteriously, vegetable soup is all starting to make Sansa feel slightly nauseated; she has a strong urge to get out of the house and take deep gulps of the crisp fall air.

"You're right, I never am," she agrees, trying for friendly patience even as her frustration is beginning to rise. "About that paperwork—" 

"—Oh, never mind the paperwork!" Lysa snaps, bustling into the kitchen. 

Sansa has no choice but to follow. The kitchen is crowded and cramped; one of the cabinets is missing its door, revealing shelves crammed full of little black cauldrons, and the little round table in the breakfast nook is piled high with old boxes and, as far as Sansa can tell, garbage. Dried herbs hang from the ceiling, and a stack of papers covered in what Sansa thinks might be pentagrams spill off one of the counters. An old, misshapen bookshelf is stacked high with mason jars of what appears to be herbs and flowers in oil. A cat missing an ear crouches on the windowsill behind the sink, beneath lightly fluttering peace flags, and Sansa cannot help but think longingly of her beautiful pristine townhome in D.C., in which her oven is always clean and no garbage languishes on her kitchen table. 

Just three days. Three days in this house, and she'll be on her way to her lovely, charming, clean bed and breakfast. She can get through it; she once had to go through a particular congressman's entire hard drive full of unsavory, fetish-based photographs to ensure a particular senator's daughter appeared in none of them, so as far as she's concerned, she can do basically anything. "Now, what kind of tea would you like?" Lysa continues, going to the sink to retrieve a mint-green kettle. "Jon was kind enough to do the grocery run for us," she continues, a strongly girlish note in her voice when she says _Jon_ , "so we've got all kinds of tea. He got every kind on my list!" 

"So generous of him," Sansa says, doing her best to infuse some brightness into her voice. Her shoulder is beginning to throb from holding her heavy satchel—which contains two laptops, a makeup bag, and her 'emergency bag' that she always has handy for any sort of emergency—but she cannot bring herself to set her beloved Mulberry bag on the sticky tiled floor, and then she feels guilty for such an ungenerous thought.

It is inexplicably infuriating that Jon Snow apparently does the grocery shopping for these women on top of everything else, and somehow that irritation makes her shoulder throb even more. "While you're doing that, I'll start looking at the—" 

"Oh, come, the offices close at four," Melisandre purrs, reaching up and stroking Sansa's cheek as she studies Sansa with an almost clinical interest. "You can go tomorrow. We've got far more urgent things to address now, like this—"

"—Love block, yes," Sansa agrees with a smile, stepping politely out of Melisandre's reach, "the thing is, without a house, I imagine it's much harder to address love blocks." 

(Okay, so that was a little bit bitchy.)

(Maybe she needs a nap. Or some caffeine.)

"The universe will provide," Lysa says airily, as the kettle lets out a shrieking whistle. "It always does. Just yesterday I was thinking of how badly I was craving orange and spice tea, and then—what do you know—Jon Snow appears on our front porch with bags from Acme! Wonders never cease. In the meantime, have some tea." 

Sansa feels a powerful headache coming on. 

She accepts the grubby mug, following Lysa into the front sitting room. This room, clearly, is where the women spend the bulk of their time—for one thing, it's far cleaner, and far more pleasant. A fire is crackling merrily in the fireplace, making the room almost too warm, but the incense is thickest here, making Sansa's eyes water slightly. Plush red and pink armchairs are squashed in around a sagging velvet sofa, and red gauzy scarves are draped over every lamp. Creaking bookshelves line one wall, with ancient-looking books that almost look like props for a haunted house. A deck of bent, worn tarot cards is splayed along the coffee table, with three cards facing up among them, though they're too far away for Sansa to see them clearly.

"Mel was doing a reading for your visit," Lysa explains, as Sansa gingerly sits on the edge of one of the pink chairs. "Things look—" she begins, but there's an impatient rap on the door, and she halts. 

"Ah, unsurprising," Melisandre says dreamily, "another guest, just as the cards told me." 

Before either woman gets to her feet, the screen door shrieks open, and undeniably male footsteps creak along the floor wetly—it must have begun to rain outside. 

"Lysa? Melisandre?" A deep voice calls, and then there is a man standing in the archway to the front room, and Sansa's grip slips on her untouched mug of tea. 

It's Jon Snow.

He's somehow unimaginably different and exactly the same as when she last saw him all those years ago. Still strong but lean—he never looked like a football player; Robb always said he was meant to be a quarterback, with his speed and accuracy, but he was always the slimmest player on the field. His dark hair is still messy and long, but now it's pulled back into a knot. He's got stubble now, too. Rather than one of the old band tees he always wore when she knew him—and, on one notable occasion, a rented tuxedo—he's clad in a navy Winter High windbreaker, advertising the varsity football team. _Coach Snow_ is embroidered on the chest, but the thread is so worn away that it's barely visible. The collar of a white tee shirt peeks out from the windbreaker.

Amid all of the pinks and purples, the Enya and the incense, Jon has a clean, masculine energy that is utterly at odds with the house, and utterly at odds with the boy she knew, who wore dark hand-me-downs and never smiled at anybody.

However, his pretty mouth is set in a grimace, like he's very angry and trying to hide it, so at least that feels familiar.

"Jon! I didn't expect to see you before Saturday!" Lysa exclaims in that girlish voice again—Sansa guiltily recalls Mom mentioning, once, after a bit too much wine, how 'boy-crazy' her sister always was—as she smooths her hair. 

Jon meets Sansa's eyes, and she sees a flash of recognition spark in his cool grey eyes; she feels her neck flush with embarrassment. 

(Why should _she_ be embarrassed, anyway?)

(Fine, he did her a favor that one time. But then he took it way too far.)

(If anyone ought to be embarrassed, it's _him_.) 

Her head is starting to pound, and the thick scent of incense is starting to make her feel a little dizzy. She suddenly wants to claw her way out of this overstuffed, overheated sitting room, and run down the street. 

"Sansa Stark is here," Melisandre informs him in that eerily calm voice, and she gestures an elegant hand to Sansa. "Weapons and all." 

To his credit, Jon doesn't seem fazed by Melisandre's odd phrase, and more or less ignores her. He glances to Sansa with a brusque nod. 

"Hi, Sansa. It's been a while," he says simply, before looking to Lysa again and speaking before Sansa can respond. _That's it?_ she thinks, even though she knows she's being unreasonable. Part of her knows he's being decently polite, but that part is small, and one she feels like ignoring at the moment. "A word, Lysa?" 

"Oh, you can have two, at least, Jon," she giggles.

Sansa realizes there's a slim shadow in the hall behind Jon, and when he steps aside, she sees her cousin Robin. 

He is as pale and sickly-looking as he always was; he's grown taller but he still has the face of a twelve year old, though he must be at least sixteen, and his eyes are red and slightly puffy, like he's been crying. He's wearing a truly horrifying sweater that must have once belonged to someone's grandmother, and purple sweatpants with the elastic cuffs tucked into tube socks. He avoids Sansa's eyes, flushing, and Jon looks back at him. 

"Hi, Robin," Sansa greets, and Robin offers a wave. She used to be his favorite cousin, when he was younger and less aware of his own weirdness, and she feels a pang for him, and for the pain of adolescence. 

"Right, thanks," Jon says. "Robin, you might as well go up and get started on that essay you owe me." 

"Um, yeah, sure, Mr. Snow," Robin says, before hastening up the carpeted stairs. The ceiling creaks and trembles with his footfalls as he goes into what Sansa assumes is his bedroom. An uncomfortable silence descends on the four of them as Jon turns back to Lysa.

"Lysa, I don't want to tell you how to parent—" he begins, and all of the girlishness drops from Lysa like a heavy coat.

"Not this again," she snaps, the color draining from her face. "I told you, Jon, Robin is a sweet boy, a sensitive boy. He's not like those boys you coach. He's better, he's smarter. One day, they'll all be working for him." 

Sansa watches a muscle leap in Jon's jaw as Lysa continues. "He just needs to survive high school. I've thought of homeschooling him, but I have simply too much to do, what with my practice," she continues matter-of-factly. "I'll be a full-time witch soon, and besides, I could hardly manage algebra when I was his age, let alone now." 

Jon presses his lips together and draws in a breath, like he's physically stopping himself from speaking, and then lets the breath out. "Besides, I've cast plenty of anti-bullying spells. I really should work harder on my spellwork; maybe that's why the bullying hasn't let up," she mutters to herself, looking ashamed. 

"Alright. Well," he begins at last, setting a bracing hand on the arch beside him, "that's all." 

He doesn't bother saying anything else; he simply turns and leaves, as though he doesn't trust himself to say another word, and Sansa listens as the screen door shrieks again. 

Melisandre looks utterly unruffled, but Lysa looks flushed now, like she is on the verge of tears, and Sansa feels a sudden, powerful wave of defensiveness and empathy for Lysa. Despite her tone, Sansa can see she is ashamed and horrified at Jon's words. She doesn't have it easy—a single mother, who never had any of her more popular sister's social graces; a widow who relied on her older, more controlling husband to navigate the boring realities of adulthood; a very lonely, very unhappy woman. She gets to her feet. 

(Maybe part of her is a little ashamed at her own impatience with this woman, too.)

"I'll just be a second," she tells the two women, before hastening out onto the front porch. 

Jon Snow is standing on the front steps, looking down at his phone. A black pickup truck is idling behind her Mini. At the sound of the screen door swinging shut, Jon turns back around to face her. 

For a moment they merely regard each other, and Sansa feels oddly exposed. She wonders if any stray hairs have escaped her sleek bun, or if she's got any wrinkles in her blouse or skirt, as Jon's eyes take in her stilettos and tasteful earrings and watch. She still feels too warm, too dizzy, and she pins it on the anger and the incense.

"I hear you're taking care of my aunt," she begins at last, though her voice is a little unsteady, so she clears her throat. "That's really kind of you."

Before he can reply, she cuts in. "But there's no need to treat her like that." 

"Treat her like—" Jon begins, looking baffled, and she continues. 

"She's doing her best. And as for Robin, you might have some sympathy—"

"—Are you kidding? I have nothing but sympathy," Jon interrupts furiously, climbing back up the steps to face her beneath the eaves. He's less than an arm's length away now, and she feels as claustrophobic as she did in the sitting room. "I just cut football practice short so I could take him home—" 

"—Oh, well, in _that_ case," Sansa blurts out sarcastically, feeling her face flush as she takes an unsteady step back, one stiletto heel getting caught between the boards of the porch, "I mean, there's nothing more important than football!" 

Jon's head cocks to the side as he stares at her, that baffled and slightly enraged look again, like he cannot believe anyone could be so rude. 

"What is your problem?" he demands, his neck flushing to match hers.

(It is, she will think later when she is alone and not faced with Jon Snow and not strangely outraged at him, an excellent question.)

(She will still not have the answer.)

"There's no problem," she replies with the mask-like smile she reserves for particularly gross male clients. "But Aunt Lysa is a vulnerable woman—" 

"—Yes, I agree," Jon interrupts indignantly, so she raises her voice--

"—Who has not had a happy history with men—"

"—She's a grown woman who needs to take better care of her son!" Jon explodes. 

The Enya that was blaring inside is abruptly turned off, and Sansa and Jon regard each other breathlessly. 

Even though it is now raining in earnest, Sansa feels like the air around them crackles with an inexplicable anger. Jon's shoulders rise and fall as he stares at her, and Sansa's mouth goes dry. 

She is abruptly aware of both his profound generosity toward and his exasperation with these women, and she imagines him standing in the checkout line at the Acme, a conveyer belt full of different kinds of tea that he would never buy—and then she remembers that night in high school, and what he did for her, and the anger makes her whole body flush again. She is humiliated on Lysa's behalf, that's all.

Jon looks away, running a hand self-consciously over his hair and biting his lip. He clears his throat as she crosses her arms over her chest. "Um. Robb said you were going to try and help with the house." 

"Yes, I'm going to the township offices tomorrow." 

Their voices are low, chagrined, embarrassed. They are both all too aware that they have behaved atrociously, with no clear reason. Sansa frees her stiletto from the crack in the floorboards and adjusts her blouse. It's chilly now, and her blouse is short-sleeved, and her skin tingles with gooseflesh that Jon's eyes seem to snag on.

"Sam Tarly's one of my best friends and he works for the township; maybe he can help. Let me know if you want me to talk to him," Jon says now, avoiding her eyes again, and her anger resurges. 

(First of all, Robb should obviously be one of his best friends.) 

(Second of all, does he have some sort of favor-doing complex?) 

(Who does he think he is—some sort of white knight?)

"I should be fine, but thanks," she says, and resists the urge to explain just how qualified she is to handle this issue. 

(She's actually not that qualified, technically speaking; she knows nothing about real estate and land laws. But she wants Jon Snow to know that she no longer is a damsel who needs favors from him. She is a competent, independent, capable woman.)

(And furthermore, he is _so sexist_ to act like he can just march into her aunt's _sitting room_ and _tell_ her how to _raise her son_. What, does he have some sort of woman problem?!) 

Jon's eyes flick to her again. His brows briefly arch then lower, like he's keeping something rude to himself. His eyes are truly the most peculiar grey; something about the different shades of grey in them makes her think of a soft grey cat. 

(Why is she noticing this right now? Why?)

"Well," he says at last, drawing in another deep breath and stepping back. "Seems like you've got everything covered."

(He is definitely, definitely making fun of her.) 

"Yes, I really do, but thanks again," she says with another humorless smile. "You should get back to practice."

"Yeah, nothing more important than football," Jon says drily. He turns to go. "I'll be over on Saturday to deal with the crawlspace issue. Not sure what time." He's got his back to her and he's walking down the steps, and she is annoyed to note that the view is more or less perfect.

"Oh, right, that," she lies, pretending to know what he's talking about. "Totally not necessary, but thanks," she calls after him. Jon looks over his shoulder at her as he pauses before his truck. 

"What, are you an electrician, too?" 

"I happen to know a few things," she informs him. 

(She knows exactly nothing about anything related to electricity, or crawlspaces.) 

She waves. "See you!" 

He gives her a short wave before getting into his truck, and Sansa swiftly goes back into the house, muscles rigid, because she senses that if she is alone with her thoughts for even one second, she will be drowned by a wave of embarrassment. 

(What _was_ that? What just came over her? Who _is_ she? What is her problem?)

(She has maintained her perfect, renowned, highly billable composure in the face of the president, for god's sake. And then two minutes with Jon Snow apparently has her pelting insults and jabs at him like some sort of child.)

"Well, not a sex block, apparently," Lysa says as Sansa enters the suffocating sitting room again.

"Indeed. I'll open a window," Melisandre agrees, rising from the ottoman she was curled on. Sansa flushes. 

"Sorry, what?" she asks politely. 

"Sex block. You don't have one," Lysa says in a nasal voice as she pinches her nose, waving her hand in the air. "God, you're just covered in male energy. I've never seen Jon's sacral chakra so pronounced! Not that I'm an expert on chakras; I hardly ever work with them." 

Sansa stands there in the middle of the room uncomfortably as Melisandre forces open one of the grubby windows, waving her hands as though to waft out a bad smell. 

"If we don't handle it, you'll set something on fire," she explains to Sansa. "We'll need to burn some sage." 

"Now, there's nothing _wrong_ with a bit of male energy," Lysa hedges, getting to her feet and rummaging through a large mahogany cabinet beside the fire. She produces a large, leather-bound book that is falling apart and bound by sueded strings, and rifles through the ruffled pages. "But you can't go around like that." 

"I'll get my bells," Melisandre says serenely, floating out of the room. 

"Get the silver one," Lysa calls after her. She turns back to Sansa. "You poor thing. How long has it been?" 

There is no smooth way to answer when your kooky aunt asks you how long it has been since you last had sex, as it turns out.  
  
Sansa opens her mouth and closes it, trying instead for her mask-like smile that people interpret however they choose to, but Lysa only frowns sympathetically, and comes toward Sansa, enveloping her in another hug. "Oh, you poor thing. When you have to do math to answer that question, you know it's bad." 

Lysa releases Sansa and goes back to rummaging through the cabinet. "But don't you worry. Melisandre will fetch her bells, and we'll burn some sage, and rev up that feminine energy again so you're not so overpowered by him next time. You have to feel sorry for poor Jon; I don't think he's got any bells at home to help him. Must make a note to give him at least one." 

Sansa stands there in shock as Lysa begins burning sage, closing her eyes and humming as she sways in place; Melisandre enters with a long strand of bells and a stack of books, a few crystals clinking in her arms. 

There is a tiny part of her that has to admit that she pictured that meeting going differently with Jon. It's the part of her that secretly devours Lifetime movies on the rare occasion that she takes a sick day; the part of her that is sort of curious about what's inside those old books; the part of her that thought, Samhain, as she glimpsed that stag in the woods. There is a tiny part of her that sort of pictured him being blown away and impressed by how successful she has become, and they would have an instant connection, and—

No. She cannot think like that. It's all because she's been so caught up over Gendry; she's looking for love—or something—in all the exact worst places. 

Three days. She just has to spend the next three days focusing on saving Lysa's house. With a guilty stab, she tries not to think of poor Robin, hiding alone in his bedroom, with puffy eyes and his shoulders rounded in shame. 

_Just focus on saving the house,_ she reminds herself, _and in three days all of this will be over._


	3. the hanged man and the fool

That night, Sansa sleeps in the attic bedroom on the third floor, beneath a watery-blue floral bedspread, a relic belonging to the eighties that makes her eyes water and her nose tingle. 

The attic is unfinished and is more or less further storage space, crowded with strange things: a large black cauldron that Lysa pragmatically informed her had been a "very good deal" but that was never quite the right size for her concoctions; a cardboard cutout of a famous action hero from the nineties that no one had an explanation for; more skulls (!?); a sagging shelf full of old _American Girl_ books that she suspects were Robin's, though he wouldn't admit it; and other strange odds and ends. 

She lies beneath the horrible bedspread, texting Bran. Arya is the sibling she is closest to, but it is Arya and Gendry's anniversary of their first date tonight (Arya doesn't care, Gendry does) and they will be doing something special before retiring to Sansa's townhouse.

(It feels a bit symbolic, somehow.) 

(She tries not to think of what it might feel like to sit across from Gendry in low lighting, staring into those blue eyes. Sometimes, when she's feeling really low, she lets herself imagine. She doesn't know what they'd talk about, really, but she's sure it would be something scintillating and profound. Mostly she lets herself sink into imagining what it might feel like to be seen, to be understood, to be loved for both her lacquered outer self _and_ her shamefully soft inner self.) 

(There is a weight pressing down on her chest.)

So she can't text Arya. And Robb is her next closest sibling, but he'll just bother her about Jon Snow, and she doesn't feel like thinking about or talking about how horribly she behaved today. Now that she's alone, and the wild absurdity of the day is receding, she is left with hot, itchy shame that makes her sort of want to plug her ears, sing loudly, and banish the whole thing from her mind. 

(Have they worked out the technology from _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ yet?)

(She could really, really use it.) 

_**Bran [11:38:19]:** well you really liked american girls right?? so thats something to bond over _

_**Bran [11:38:45]** : i remember reading yours before mom went on that spring cleaning binge and got rid of all our books _

_**Bran [11:39:13]:** theres a lot of good history in those! i dont know why theyre not cool for boys too_

Sansa cannot help but smile at her brother's texts. Bran is sweet, sometimes impish, always loving, and has the same voracious appetite for stories that she used to. He used to climb the trees in their backyard, back when they all still lived up in Ithaca, and hide among the leaves to plow through a stack of books. He would read anything, whether it was considered "acceptable" for boys or not. 

_**Sansa [11:40:04]:** I have a feeling he's being bullied. And I'm worried that Aunt Lysa doesn't know how to help him, because she was bullied herself._

She does not say that she actually knows, for a fact, he's being bullied; Bran will tell Mom, and Mom will come up to Princeton like a hurricane, and Sansa suspects that that will do more harm than good. 

_**Bran [11:40:37]:** :( that sucks _

_**Sansa [11:41:02]:** Yes. It really does. _

She says good night to Bran and lies in the too-warm attic, staring at the shelf of _American Girl_ books. She only appreciates, now that she is an adult, just how easy her own teen years were. She and Robb both had obnoxiously easy adolescences that now make her understand just where the animosity between her and Arya sprung up. At the time, of course, it didn't _feel_ easy: she was the most dramatic teenager of all, and was always running off to her bedroom to write in her diary and weep, or swooning over—

—Best not think of that. 

Anyway, all in all, Sansa knows her life has been easy. And there is something she is trying to articulate in her mind, some resultant measure of responsibility she therefore feels, or is trying not to feel about Robin, but she is exhausted, and she slips off to sleep before she can really work out what she means. 

When her phone alarm goes off at five am, vibrating in her hand, she has forgotten it completely. 

* * *

The morning is thick with fog, and still dark, as Sansa sets out thirty minutes after her alarm's gone off, clad in head-to-toe Lululemon, for a run. She likes being the first person up in the world. That's virtually impossible in D.C., but here in this sleepy little corner of greater Princeton, she is the first one up, and she is alone. 

She runs past the houses, wondering which one is Jon's, then runs faster in case he's up and sees her out his window, and nearly trips on the pavement when she passes by that old abandoned Victorian house. 

Catching her breath, hands on her hips, she pauses before the old house. Mist gathers around it, and for a moment—

—No. She didn't see a face in the window. It's just her tired eyes, and the morning, playing tricks on her. Ridiculous. 

She starts running again, shivering, and turns onto a path along a field and a split-rail fence. As the sky slowly lightens, the bright gold of the trees is more evident, and the mist looks thick and pearly, almost ghostly, when a large, wolfish figure emerges—

Sansa screams and skids to a halt on the pavement, and the enormous wolf—it's a wolf, isn't it?—sits down on the sidewalk, panting and regarding her with mild curiosity, as another figure emerges behind him. 

Jon Snow is there, hair out of his man bun, dressed like he's gone for a run. For a moment he looks like he ought to be in some sort of English period piece, with his hair disheveled like that, and his cheeks flushed like that, and the leaves and fog all around him—some Gothic drama scored by Martin Phipps and perhaps starring Lily James, or Kiera Knightley, as his love interest—but she shakes herself out of it. He is absolutely not worthy of Lily James or Kiera, and she will die on this hill, dammit.

(Also, she's not wearing any makeup, and for whatever silly reason, she's embarrassed about it.)

(Why does _he_ get to look like the star of a period piece this early in the morning, and she meanwhile looks like the ghostly villain of said period piece? Unfair.)

"Jon," Sansa says at last, running a hand over her tight bun. "That is ...a remarkable dog." 

"Ghost's well-behaved," he reassures her, absently scratching the wolf behind his ears. Ghost peers at her with interest, cocking his head to the side, but he's apparently not the kind of dog hell-bent on seeking love and affection from all humans, and she feels, ridiculously, sort of stung. He is as aloof as his owner.

(Not that she is at _all_ seeking affection from Jon Snow. Obviously.)

There is an awkward moment where they avoid each other's eyes, but in the middle of nowhere, there's nothing else to distract from the fact that they both know they behaved rudely yesterday. They are forced to look at each other, and she wonders if her sports bra is too visible, or if she looks sweaty, or if her hair's coming out of its bun. Then she feels silly for wondering.

"Are you, um, out for your morning walk with him?" she tries, because the awkwardness is becoming agonizing. 

"No, I'm letting him hunt stray pets," Jon says, and it takes her a moment to process his sarcasm. "Yeah, we're walking," he adds when she doesn't laugh. He nods to her running getup. "You're running?"

"Hunting stray pets, actually," Sansa says, desperate for some reason to recover her graces, and she is gratified when his lips twitch with an almost-laugh. "Well, I'd better let you go," she says quickly, "lots to do today." 

"See you." Jon waves disinterestedly to her as she begins running again, trying not to actively cringe at the awkwardness. 

Whatever. It's just Jon Snow, and everything with him is always so fucking awkward. Just what she needed, obviously, was an early morning cringe-fest to set her up to argue with the township today. _God_ but that was _so awkward,_ like they're both weird teenagers who don't know how to interact with fellow humans. _Oh my god oh my god._ Part of her knows she ought to just get over it, but part of her also knows she's going to be cringing about this conversation all day. 

When she is a safe distance, she glances back over her shoulder, and through the mist she can barely make out he is looking back at her, over his shoulder. 

They both look hastily away.

* * *

When she gets back, Lysa and Melisandre are up, and taking their coffee in the front room with all the pink. Lysa is still in her pajamas and looks irritable, but Melisandre is decked out—knee-high black boots, a velvet dress that would look more appropriate on someone thirty years younger, and that black bat choker. She's also blown-out and curled her hair, and she keeps sighing and tossing it over one shoulder or the other, earning slightly jealous looks from Lysa.

When Sansa enters, still out of breath and stopping her running app, both women look up, alert. 

"Did you meet Jon Snow this morning?" Melisandre asks shrewdly. 

"Yes, actually, I ran into him while he was walking his dog. Why?"

Lysa is the one to respond. 

"Well, your aura looks—"

"SLUT!"

Sansa shrieks and Lysa almost drops her coffee cup, as they look to the staircase. There is a woman hunched there, wearing grey pajamas, with long, thin grey hair and slightly bulbous eyes. She looks like a cartoon witch. "You stole my Celine!" She points a shaking finger at Melisandre, who sips her coffee, unruffled, but Lysa rolls her eyes. 

"Sansa, this is Selyse," she says irritably.

"We met when I slept with her husband," Melisandre puts in dreamily. 

"My Celine!" Selyse barks again, tottering down the stairs. No one explains what her Celine is, but Sansa doubts it's a Celine bag or sunglasses (to be fair, if someone stole _her_ Celine sunglasses, she too would probably shout obscenities at them, at least in her mind). 

"Right, well, I'm going to go get dressed and head over to the township building," Sansa says loudly, as Selyse begins shouting at Melisandre, but none of these silly women seem to hear her or care. She lingers, wondering if she should interfere, and then with an impatient roll of her eyes, ascends the stairs. 

* * *

Two hours later, lots of battling with a shower that runs hot and cold, and a Venti cold brew that she wishes she could have mainlined, Sansa is being shown into Mr. Tarly's office at the municipal building.

In spite of the seventies carpeting and yellow lighting, Mr. Tarly's office is cheerful: there are shelves packed to bursting full of books, and an almost unreasonable number of framed photographs of his wife and son scattered throughout the office; a calendar featuring playful kittens is open to October ("Aren't they so sweet?" he asks fondly, and Sansa cannot help but agree heartily); and a few cheerful, slightly cutesy Halloween decorations perch on shelves or are pasted onto windows. 

"Call me Sam," Mr. Tarly asks her eagerly, round face shining as he gestures for her to take a seat. "My assistant Pypar went to get us all some coffee. Now, your email said you've come from D.C.."

"Yes, just stopping in for a couple of days, on my way to upstate New York for a vacation," Sansa says smoothly. She wants to emphasize that there is limited time she has in which to resolve this matter. She smiles at Sam. 

"And how are you finding Princeton? Don't you just adore it?" he puts in before she can reply. He looks out the window and swoons. "I just love knowing there's so much learning happening, so nearby. I find it reassuring, thinking about all those bright young minds being expanded—"

"—The American education system, including college, is a scam!" a cheeky voice interrupts, and Sam lets out a long-suffering sigh. Sansa turns around to find a skinny man with bright eyes and large ears approaching with a tray of coffees. "Burn it down, I say," he adds, with a sly wink to Sansa. 

"I'm sorry, burn _what_ down, exactly?" Sam sputters, outraged. 

"Kidding, kidding," the man—she assumes this is Pypar—reassures him. "I like to keep him on his toes," he adds to Sansa. 

"Ignore him," Sam sniffs. "Thank you very much for the coffee, Pypar," he adds reluctantly, apparently as reflexively polite as she is, Jon Snow encounters notwithstanding. "Now, what have you come in for, Ms. Stark?" 

"I'm actually here to speak with you about this." 

Sansa pushes the notices across the desk, and Sam picks them up and slips on some reading glasses, scanning them. He is much too young to need them, but somehow he has the air of a cheery, indulgent aunt, or an elderly, slightly absentminded professor, and they don't look out of place at all. 

"Oh, yes!" he says at last. "Lysa Arryn's house."

"I understand that my aunt's house is to be condemned, but as you'll—"

"It's not just about that, though that house is in disturbing shape," Sam interrupts, setting down the notice. He looks a bit guilty. "The thing is, Ms. Stark—"

"—Call me Sansa—" she interrupts with her most winning smile. 

"—Sansa, well, the thing is, I don't know if your aunt has received our more recent notices, but that land—"

"OH! It's _that_ house!" Pypar blurts out from his desk in the corner, where he is working on an ancient Windows computer. "The burial grounds house."

Sam looks embarrassed. 

"Yes, it's that one. Listen, Sansa, this is unfortunately a losing battle." 

He pats the paper. "A professor at Princeton—quite an important one, actually, though he's asked to remain anonymous, recognizing he's interfering with livelihoods—found some evidence in the records that that house sits on top of Puritan burial grounds."

Sansa stares at him. 

"Some evidence?" she quotes, keeping her voice as sweet as possible. "There's 'some evidence' for a lot of things, Sam. If you don't mind my pointing out, that's hardly a reason to—"

"—Well, it's that and the condemnation, isn't it?" Sam asks guiltily. "The professor gave us the tip, and when we went to inspect the site, we saw the house was, well, to be frank about it, flagrantly violating pretty much every code in the township, not to mention it's falling apart and poses a serious health hazard to the rest of the street. We've been getting complaints about the house for years! If it weren't for my dear friend Jon and his heroic work on that house, we would have had to force your aunt to leave years ago."

"He was a no one, a zero zero, now he's a honcho, he's a hero," Pypar sings under his breath, and Sam shoots him an impatient look. "Sorry. We've been watching a lot of Disney at home." 

"Yes, I've met Jon," Sansa agrees, "and my family's _so_ grateful to him. He spoke very highly of you, I have to say." 

Sam blushes. 

"Oh, well," he blusters, "that's Jon for you. Just the most wonderful—he's my favorite person, really, and he's done so much for Winter High, Jon just never stops working to make the lives of those around him better—" 

"Oh, Jon," Pyp flutters in a falsetto that is uncomfortably accurate, clearly annoyed with the turn the conversation's taken, earning another impatient look from Sam. 

(Sansa shares his annoyance.)

(She has frankly had quite enough of Jon Snow.)

"Well, I can see there's nothing to be done about it," she says with a sigh and an air of finality, as she gets to her feet.

She feels Pypar's eyes on her legs—her shoes, more accurately—and she ignores him. "You must be close friends with the professors at Princeton," she adds, looking to the expansive shelves. "Whoever that professor is, he must have really trusted you to understand, better than anyone, the importance of such a finding." 

Sam glows. 

"Well, Stannis and I—no!" He looks horrified. "It wasn't—it's not Stannis—"

(Pypar groans from his corner.)

Sansa smiles. 

"Don't worry, I heard nothing!" She gathers up the papers as Sam flaps about anxiously. "I can see this is a losing battle, Mr. Tarly, and there's nothing to be done about it. I'll let you get on with your day; I'm sure you're very busy." 

("You were just played like a fiddle, I hope you know that," she hears Pypar saying as she clacks down the hall, away from the two men.)

* * *

It is certainly time for a victory latte, so Sansa braves the parking in Palmer Square and stops in the Starbucks, googling 'Stannis' and 'Princeton' on her phone while she waits in line with moneyed nineteen-year-olds. It almost seems too easy, really, but she's so delighted with herself that she gets a highly caloric latte—complete with whipped cream—and a lemon cake, and savors it outside at one of the little metal tables as she scans what the internet has to say about Stannis of Princeton. 

She almost thinks she ought to call her bed and breakfast and let them know she'll be there a day early. All she's got to do is get in touch with Dr. Stannis Baratheon, and she is almost certain she can get him to suddenly find evidence to the contrary. In the meantime, she'll simply un-condemn Lysa's house. 

She remembers, belatedly, that Melisandre's little storefront psychic business is here in Palmer Square, but among all of the shining wealth, the brick walkways, the Tudor and Georgian facades, the lush sycamores bestowing gold and the maples burning bright, it is impossible to imagine a psychic business surviving her. 

She finishes her latte and cake, and begins walking along the street, searching for the psychic business, and just as she spots it between a cupcake cafe and a pet groomer's, the heel of her right Jimmy Choo gets stuck between two bricks. 

Sansa doesn't curse but she almost does, then. The little black plastic nub on the end of the heel's come off, revealing the metal inside, and there's a long tear in the buttery leather of the stiletto. Her victory slightly diminished—she loves these shoes—Sansa enters Melisandre's shop. 

Inside, it's all red light provided by crimson scarves over Tiffany lamps, and Enya playing in the background (again; actually, she's pretty sure this is Enya's track from the _Lord of the Rings_ soundtrack, which she only is so familiar with thanks to Bran), and behind a beaded curtain, Melisandre rises to her feet. 

There's a crystal ball on a shelf behind her, and a chart showing the phases of the moon, and a neatly-stacked pack of tarot cards on the little white table in front of her. 

"I cleared my schedule for the hour," she informs Sansa, "as I knew you would come seek guidance from the universe." 

Sansa is still peeved about her shoe, but she manages a smile. 

"You must be quite the talented seer, to have seen that, as I only just decided to come in," she says. Melisandre's smile broadens. 

"You are quite the talented actress," she replies smoothly, and Sansa has the feeling she's been insulted. "Sit, sit." 

Sansa sets down her satchel and obligingly sits in the wooden chair across the table from Melisandre. "I foresaw I would do a simple reading for you, this first time—just three cards," she continues, shuffling the cards.

Her hands are surprisingly elegant, and Sansa thinks again of how she says she and her housemate, Selyse, met. Sansa wonders how Melisandre believes she enchanted this man, and if she realizes it was her beauty and not her spells or her witchcraft that did it. 

She spreads the cards out in a fan along the table. These cards are old, very old, and something prickles on the back of Sansa's neck. "Choose three cards, Sansa Stark."

"How?" Sansa studies the cards. 

"Pick the ones that you feel a pull towards; the ones whose energy you are drawn to. For this first one, think of your past." 

She wants to roll her eyes, but something about this dimly-lit room, heady with incense and perfume, feels secret, sacred. Again Sansa feels that inconvenient stab of guilt for being so impatient with these women. 

(Sometimes she glimpses herself in the mirror and she does not like who she is becoming.)

(Why is she becoming such a bitch?)

(When did it happen?) 

(She used to be kind.) 

So she decides, in honor of trying to be less of a bitch, to give it a shot for real. She draws in a deep breath, letting her hand hover over the cards, and—incredibly—she _is_ drawn to one, nearly eclipsed by another, but she knows that is her card. 

"Past," Melisandre says softly, drawing the card and setting it, face down, between them. "Now choose another, while thinking of your present." 

Sansa tries not to think of Gendry, but she can't help it, she is thinking of his blue eyes, and suddenly she sort of wants to cry, out of nowhere. She blinks rapidly and points to the card that her eye is drawn to. "Present. And now—your future." 

Her future looks like a black hole. Maybe she'll go on solving other people's gross problems for forever. She'll certainly make bank doing it. She'll have the most elegant townhome, the best shoes, and—god, why is she feeling sorry for herself now? 

But the card comes to her quickly, powerfully, and she swallows as Melisandre eyes her, drawing the card and setting it on the table. "Past, present, future." 

An elegant hand turns over the past. "The Hanged Man, reversed. I'm not surprised," Melisandre observes. "The Hanged Man represents change, a metamorphosis, and usually, when the Hanged Man is reversed, it's a sign of stagnation, but in this case—" her large eyes meet Sansa's, and in the dim red glow, they look red too, "—I think it means a failed metamorphosis. A partial one. When I drew from the deck earlier, while contemplating you, I drew the Star, Sansa Stark. And the Star is all about opportunities, and inspiration, and a sense of well-being. A sense of bright inner faith in oneself." 

"I don't understand," Sansa admits. 

"I think," Melisandre says, contemplating the Hanged Man, "if I told you today, you would not be ready to hear it just yet."

She taps the Hanged Man thoughtfully with a red nail. "Let's move on." 

She turns over the next card—the present. "The Lovers," Melisandre says quietly, and Sansa is surprised to note that she seems to be trying to be respectful, for her voice is gentle. "Reversed. A broken commitment, a failure. Not broken in the usual ways," she muses, shaking her head. "No, I see now. Opportunities. _Missed_ opportunities."

Sansa tries not to think of Gendry as she feels Melisandre's gaze on her again. "You are valiant-hearted, Sansa Stark, and you are quick to sacrifice, though you wish others would not know. You're quick to sacrifice opportunities, and that is perhaps the hardest sacrifice of all to make. But a missed opportunity is not always a thing to grieve." 

Sansa swallows. She cannot believe she is actually getting emotional over this. She blinks rapidly and discreetly wipes her eye, trying to preserve her eyeliner. "But your energy is that of the Star, Sansa—that bright inner light. Your intuition is so strong, if you let yourself listen to it. The universe will guide you." 

Sansa is afraid to speak, afraid that her voice will come out wobbly, because she _has_ sacrificed opportunities—little ones, and one big one in particular. She would make the same choice again, no matter what, but it is still something she has grieved. How does Melisandre know? "The universe is always speaking to us, whether it be through magic, or art, or strange coincidences that we don't understand," Melisandre continues, turning over the final card, which symbolizes Sansa's future.

A ragged man, mournful but curious, peers back up at her. "The question is, Sansa Stark, are you listening to what the universe is trying to tell you?"

"What does this card mean?" Sansa asks at last. Melisandre has a secret smile. 

"Ah. The Fool—the card of beginnings, of spontaneity, of numberless potential paths." She touches the card fondly. "The universe has a sense of humor indeed," she muses quietly. "How funny, that this card should represent your future." 

"Why?" Sansa presses. 

Melisandre lifts her eyes to Sansa's once more. 

"I think," she says, "you're not quite ready to hear that, either." 


	4. batshit and blood

Sansa leaves Melisandre's shop and stumbles out onto Palmer Square again, with that claustrophobic head-cold feeling of having almost cried.

The sunlight is bright and the air feels crisp after the funk of incense of Melisandre's shop, and the clamor of students around her is jarring. All this casual wealth, all this polished youth, all this gifted opportunity, sits in stark contrast to what Sansa encountered in the shop: something darker, older, deeper. A bit of a rot in the garden; a reminder that even with the best university, the best shoes, the brightest and most shining future, no one is safe from grief, from unhappiness, from all of the little disappointments with which life is littered.

(After all, she was voted 'Most Likely to Succeed' in her high school yearbook, just like Robb was two years before her.)

(And she _is_ successful, yet, at the same time, here she is: leaving a batshit-crazy psychic's shop with red eyes and clammy palms, a gash in her Jimmy Choo, and an acute awareness that success was never what she was after—and upon being voted Most Likely to Succeed, a teenaged Sansa looked bemusedly at her yearbook and wondered why she felt stung by the superlative.)

(It's like being told you're the most organized person, or the most punctual, or that you have nice teeth. It means they find you boring; it means they resent you; it is not actually a compliment.)

(She remembers thinking, at the time, _do they even really understand me?_ )

 _Well, you're just a delight to be around,_ Sansa thinks to herself sarcastically, as she tries to get a grip.

Desperate to clear the fog that Melisandre's left in her head, Sansa begins walking down the street again—but halts when she spots a familiar figure skulking down the road, hunched beneath the considerable weight of an indigo patterned backpack.

"Robin?" she calls. Her cousin freezes in his tracks before ducking into the Princeton art museum shop.

It's not nearly time for school to let out. Robin is skipping class.

 _The bullying hasn't let up,_ Lysa's voice echoes in Sansa's mind.

She forgets her own tears, her ruined shoe, and, as though stalking a fawn in a forest, creeps past the shop window, peering in through the thick glass and peeling mullions, at Robin, who is pretending to be absorbed in a book on New Jersey history (fascinating!). There's a bloody gash on his hand and the right knee of his sweatpants is torn, stained dark with blood. 

Her stomach turns. 

She can't help it: she is a professional problem-solver. Sansa is a compulsive fixer. Maybe no one likes it about her, maybe they find her interfering, or nosy, or perfectionist, but this is who she is. And deeper than that, she is a person who cannot bear to let another suffer. She thinks of Robin's socks pulled over the scrunched hem of his sweatpants, of the way he cowered behind Jon Snow, of the look of sheer anguish on Lysa's face—

—and then she finds herself thinking of the Fool. Of beginnings, of spontaneity, of numberless potential paths.

Okay, so it's silly. But she takes out her phone and dials the bed and breakfast she's booked herself.

"Hi, I'd like to make a change to my reservation," she begins, walking away from the art museum shop. "Yes, it looks like I'll be a few days late."

* * *

Sansa spends the rest of the afternoon trying to get in touch with one Stannis Baratheon, but as it turns out, he is not an easy man to contact, and by the time she tracks down where his office is on Princeton's campus, it's already dinner time, and she has another task in mind for the evening.

"You look like a lady from a cashmere catalogue," Lysa says when Sansa comes down the stairs and enters the front room. There's a fire roaring again in the fireplace, and Melisandre is supervising as Lysa writes, with a fountain pen, in a book with tea-stained pages, that looks like a cross between a scrapbook and a prop from a historical museum. Ominously, bats are poorly-drawn around the edges of the current page. At least, she thinks they're bats.

(Sansa has changed into some of her loungewear bought for her vacation; she is aiming for _casual but still gorgeous_. Effortlessly elegant.)

(Just because she always likes looking pretty. Not because she is about to go over to Jon Snow's house. Obviously.)

"Thank you," Sansa says loftily, pretending she doesn't see the look that Lysa and Melisandre exchange. "I'm off to take a walk," she begins casually, sidling over to the front door. She had hoped to make it out without them noticing. "Just a walk through the lovely neighborhood."

"Jon Snow's house is the third on the right," Melisandre says without looking up, and Sansa cannot help but think of a cat swishing its tail snidely.

Sansa doesn't reply, and resists the urge to slam the door on her way out. She's annoyed at Melisandre and Lysa for implying, with their facial expressions alone, that she is pursuing Jon Snow for romantic or sexual reasons, but not annoyed enough to deter her from her goal. 

(She is a fixer, and she is certain she can fix Robin Arryn.)

(Every time she blinks, she sees his bloody, torn sweatpants.)

(Maybe Melisandre's right about one thing—maybe she _is_ valiant-hearted.) 

(Whatever.)

The sun has set, and the street is dark. A few houses are lit up with orange lights for Halloween, giving the street a decidedly festive, cozy vibe that appeals to a part of Sansa that she usually tries to stifle. Her breath fogs in the air as she begins walking, peering into the houses as she passes, spying happy families sitting down to dinner or crowding around television screens. The abandoned Victorian is the lone dark smear on the street, and Sansa tries to ignore that tingle down her spine as she tears her gaze from its broken windows.

Jon Snow's house is the plainest house on the street, but just like the others, it looks tidy and cozy. It looks like an old farmhouse, with a wraparound porch that has two IKEA chairs and a matching table placed next to the front door, though they don't look like they get much use. The lights are on, and through the front window she can see into his living room: she glimpses a television screen with a blurry hockey game, and a grey sofa, and bookshelves that are packed to bursting, but the railing of the porch blocks her from glimpsing more. 

And then an odious thought occurs to her. 

Wait. Is Jon Snow _married?_

As she stands there on the sidewalk, her palms inexplicably clammy (ew), she realizes that this never occurred to her, and she feels a pang of outrage at his imagined marriage. He is much too young to get married—except, he's really not. He's Robb's age, two years older than her, and even if she sometimes still feels like a child, by all accounts she is a perfectly agreeable age to be married. 

(In fact, by some accounts, including her own, she's a little long in the tooth for it. Lately, when people find out she is unmarried, they look at her with sympathy, and make noises about her joining rock-climbing clubs, or maybe giving Tinder a shot, and start rattling off anecdotes about people they know who were her age and met someone, and she has to reassure them with promises that she isn't totally pathetic. She likes being single! She is not a closeted romantic at all, and she absolutely never planned out her wedding, down to the napkins, as a child. This is fine!) 

(Oh god, she's spiraling again.) 

She tries to picture what the wife of Jon Snow might look like, but all she can see is the soft-spoken boy who always wore black, and then she's remembering how he looked in his rented tuxedo, and she's remembering what he did for her, and then there's a curious squeezing sensation in her throat and chest, and she has to get away from that feeling so she defiantly marches up the front steps and knocks on Jon Snow's screen door with efficient, confident raps. 

There's a halfhearted barking sound, and then the squeak of the door opening, and Jon Snow is looking at her through the screen door with some mix of discomfort and amusement.

She can hear the hockey game on in the background, and the scritch-scratch of his dog's toenails on the hardwood floor, as their eyes meet through the warped screen. There is something more real, more immediate, about being around him than around other humans. She is aware of the cotton shirt he wears, and aware of how it lays against his skin, aware of the way her fingertips tingle when she sees it, as though she is touching the cotton herself. She is aware of it all, uncomfortably, visibly so. 

"Um, hi," Jon greets through the screen, but he doesn't open the door. _Rude._

"Hi, do you have a minute?" Sansa asks as brightly as she can, pretending there's nothing strange about this completely strange situation, and she watches Jon's brow quirk slightly. His hair's wet, like he's just gotten out of the shower, and it clings to his neck. Not attractively, or anything. "It's about Robin," she adds, and Jon's whole demeanor transforms: his shoulders drop, and that sardonic set of his pretty mouth relaxes, and he lets out a breath—as though he was holding it in—and opens the door.

She cannot help but think of a wolf whose hackles were raised, and she tries not to wonder why it always feels like they're standing down from some sort of duel. She is not a dueling type of person, normally.

(Oh, crap—what if he thinks this means she's into him? Must find some way to set the record straight without having to say it.)

(Perhaps she can make up a boyfriend.)

"Yeah, sure, come in," he says finally, swinging open the door. "I was just making dinner, if you don't mind hanging out while I cook." 

"No, of course not, it won't take long," she promises, as Ghost pads to her with curiosity and allows her to scratch him once, between the ears, before slinking off to curl up on the sofa and watch her. 

She follows Jon inside and resists the urge to look around his house in curiosity, but she gets the impression of a practical, orderly life, not at all what she would have expected from teenaged Jon. His kitchen is clean but spare, and the little round table is piled high with papers and folders, pages flagged with neon post-its, marked up with ominous handwriting. 

"Grading?" she asks, just to break the silence, glancing back over her shoulder at Jon. He looks like he's shaking himself out of something, and he turns back to the stove. 

"Yeah, Cold War," he says grimly, as though that explains it all, clearing his throat. "So, you wanted to talk about Robin?" 

He doesn't offer her a place to sit down, doesn't offer her a drink, and it just reinforces how much he obviously wants her to leave his house. Well, fine. It's not like she wanted to stay; it's not like she imagined they might bond over a glass of wine or anything. 

"I caught him skipping today," she says, leaning against the oven, since he hasn't insisted she sit, arms crossed over her chest. Jon glances at her, grey eyes lingering on her hairline, her forehead, her shoulders—everywhere but her face. "He looked like he'd been hurt. I'm guessing this has happened before?" 

He shakes his head as he begins chopping vegetables. 

"It's not any of my guys," he says loudly over the sound of the knife on the cutting board, and pauses when Sansa lets out a scoff. "What?" 

"Your _guys_?" 

At last he meets her eyes, and she feels that jolt again, that bolt of unreasonable rage, that she felt on Lysa's porch yesterday. "Are you running some sort of boys' club—"

"I literally am," he cuts in impatiently, turning away from the stove to face her, and she notes just how close they're standing, so she steps back, watches him perceive the little movement. "I coach football. You know this. And for whatever reason, you seem to find it hilarious, but there it is. And yeah, I consider them, and their behavior, my responsibility. That's the whole point of school athletics, that you're building character, helping to raise good citizens." He looks a little embarrassed, a little defensive, and it occurs to her that this is why he's coaching. He has revealed something, however unintentionally, and something about him shifts. 

"I'm sorry, it just sounds funny," she counters, feeling the heat rise in her face, and she senses she is being a bitch again, though she's not sure how it's happened or why. Defensiveness rises like steam in her face. "Your _guys_. It's so... it just sounds macho," she tries to explain.

He rolls his eyes and goes back to chopping, but she can see his neck is flushed. "I'm sorry," she says again. "I just remember you as... I don't know, sort of goth. The whole football thing always was surprising, that's all." 

"Goth?" Jon blurts, looking at her again. "What?" 

"You wore a lot of dark colors, and you were quiet, and..." she trails off, feeling ridiculous, as he raises his brows and stares at her. "Look, forget it," she says quickly, because he is reflecting something back at her about herself, and she doesn't like it. "That came out wrong, I'm sorry. I don't even really remember high school that well, so maybe I'm misremembering."

"Yeah, I don't remember it much either," Jon mutters, looking away, and for a moment that night swells between them, nebulous and embarrassing, too big to be ignored yet too shameful to be brought up. "Anyway, I don't know who's bullying him. I've tried to keep my eye on him, but it's a big school, and yeah, he does skip a lot, and that makes it harder. I've tried to talk to him, but you know, he's a kid, he's embarrassed, and to be honest, he's not doing too well in my class, so he doesn't like talking to me." 

"And Lysa's not... receptive?" 

"No, she's been awful," Jon admits, sliding the carrots into a pan and looking disgusted. He sets the cutting board and knife back on the counter, but he's not looking, and they're now balanced unsteadily on top of the spoon rest. The fixer in her thinks, _that will fall,_ but she's so aware of every movement, every little breath, that she can't bring herself to step forward and fix it; she will come too close to him. "He needs to fly under the radar more, but he can't, because she dresses him in clothes like that, and she's always doing weird things around town, and--" 

He halts, looking a little embarrassed, like he's just realized he's insulting her aunt, and Sansa offers a grimace. 

"You're not offending me," she promises. His wet hair is clinging to the back of his neck and she has the stray thought that the back of his neck is nice; the skin looks smooth, like it would feel nice underneath her lips, and it's more tan than the rest of him, probably from spending his afternoons on a field under the hot sun. 

"So what do you plan to do?" he asks, turning away from her again, and she tears her eyes from his neck. Sansa shrugs. 

"I have a few ideas. I'm, um, extending my stay," she explains, reflexively smoothing her hair in its tight bun, and when Jon glances at her, his eyes follow the movement. "I was only going to be here for a few days, but... I think I'll hang around a little bit longer. Between Robin, and the house..." 

"That's good." His back is still to her. "They need someone sensible." 

Sensible. Practical. She used to be the ditzy daydreamer and now she's the boring, straight-laced practical one. The one whose car is always clean, the one who always gets her teeth cleaned on time. Sansa thinks of the Fool again, and wonders if her period is coming. "I'm, um, glad you're here," he adds awkwardly.

And then he's glancing back at her over his shoulder and she feels that squeezing sensation again, and the kitchen feels airless, and she is staring at him and he's staring at her—

—And then there's a clatter and the knife and cutting board are sliding off the counter, and Sansa reaches instinctively to grab them, and the knife makes a light slice along her palm. 

"Shit," Jon swears, and then they're both crouching down on the tiled floor, and Jon is grabbing her bleeding palm, and before either of them can really think about what's happening, he is pressing her palm to his mouth, just as she might have done to herself, stopping the bleeding with something like a kiss.

They freeze. Her palm is still pressed to his mouth, and their gazes lock, and she sees the exact instant he processes what he has done, and that's when he drops her palm. Her heart is in her throat, and her palm is stinging, and he looks horrified as they scramble back from each other blindly.

"Um—"

"—Shit—"

"—That's—"

"—I don't know—" 

"—You shouldn't have tried to catch a _knife!_ " Jon snaps, raking a hand over his hair as he slams the cutting board and knife on the counter and looks away. Sansa grips her palm, stinging from the cut and tingling from what was basically a highly intimate kiss, and stares at his lean back in shock. 

"Well—I knew it was going to fall—" she stammers nonsensically, and he looks back at her, his neck flushed even more and his eyes wide, like she's a wild animal and he is gauging how much she could hurt him, even though that doesn't make any sense at all. "I'm going to leave," she informs him furiously. 

"Good!" he snaps back, not looking at her, and then she is retreating, standing on his porch, gripping her palm and struggling to breathe evenly. When she lets go of her hand and looks down, there is a short, thin red line, and a slight smear of blood. Even from here she can hear the slam and smack of cabinet doors being open and shut. 

Every hair on her body is standing on-end, and the orange of the Halloween lights look brighter and sharper, and that bitter tang of autumn is sharp in her nose, and stray hairs graze her cheeks and neck, coming free from her tight bun. She cannot stop thinking of how his mouth felt against her skin, that faint hint of teeth along her palm, of the heat of his hand against hers, of how there was a pause, a beat held, a momentary breath between doing it and realizing it had been done, like for a moment everything had been in free fall, everything in the world, and for that split second she had given herself over to gravity. 

And then the door slams and she is jolted from her reverie, and Jon is standing behind her, pressing his lips together, holding a cotton ball and a bandaid. He does not meet her eyes, and he wordlessly takes her hand again—his skin is so warm, his palm is so calloused, but his touch is feather-light—and presses the cotton to it. It's soaked in peroxide so it stings, and it's like he knows how she's feeling because he presses a little harder, grips her hand a little tighter. 

"I'm pretty sure Lysa doesn't have peroxide or bandaids," he mutters in explanation after clearing his throat, and Sansa thinks, _but he does_ , and she pictures him reluctantly, irritably trawling through the tea aisle, getting in groceries for these helpless women, and there's that peculiar squeezing sensation in her chest again. 

"Probably not," she admits.

If she were her normal self, with her social graces and her ability to put on a mask, she might joke that she can't wait to tell Robb that Jon has knifed her; but she doesn't trust herself to speak, and she can't look away from watching his thumb smooth the bandaid over her stinging palm. 

And when she looks up again, their eyes meet once more, and she spies that look again—like he is gauging just how much damage she could do, like she is a thing that could hurt him, and she thinks, _but he's the one who hurt me_ , and she reflexively steps back, out of his gentle touch, and watches his throat flex as he swallows. Just like that, that wary look is gone, and he's back to looking defensive and a little cool, a little guarded, a little disdainful, and she finds herself mirroring it.

(Cold War, she thinks. But if anything, she feels too warm.)

He looks away, and Sansa takes a shaky step down the steps. "I'm, um, I'm going," she stammers, wondering if this evening is in fact the weirdest evening of her life, wondering why she has to be her weirdest self around Jon Snow, wondering why she is so utterly turned on by someone sucking blood from her palm. No, wait, crap—not turned on, not turned on. That was a lie. Why did she even think that? It was a mistake, because she is one hundred percent _not_ turned on. 

"Yeah, sure," he mutters, and she grips her palm as she walks down the sidewalk in a daze. When she glances back, Jon is still standing on his porch, looking up at the porch ceiling, and she can see the breath he lets out mist in the air. 

When she gets back, Lysa and Melisandre are doing something weird with a cauldron, so she slips past them and up to the house's only bathroom. The light is yellow and unflattering, but it can't mask the fact that her cheeks and lips are flushed, her eyes are bright, and a lock of her hair has come free from its bun, snaking seductively down her neck, and the cardigan is slipping, revealing a swell of flesh she usually keeps hidden. 

(She looks like she just had a furious make-out session, except all that happened was that she was socially awkward, was incredibly rude to a very kind man, and got knifed by a carrot knife.)

And just like that—a bolt of lightning, a flash of spontaneity—Sansa has an idea of how she can help Robin. 


	5. the craft

"Will this do?"

Melisandre is holding up a lacy red stretchy camisole and a thin white tee shirt, low-cut and cap-sleeved, belonging to the Juniors department of a cheap department store in the early 2000's. Sansa pastes on a smile to stop herself from visibly cringing.

"Perfect, thank you," she says, taking the clothes. Melisandre's wardrobe appears to be a strange cross between seductive bohemian and a CW show's take on 'the sexy friend'—lots of clingy, red jersey, knee-high boots, and chokers—so she really wasn't sure what to expect when she asked Melisandre for help.

Melisandre's eyes rove over Sansa's hair, and Sansa fights the urge to smooth it down, to take out an elastic and pull it back into her signature sleek bun or ponytail. Her copper hair is hanging around her jaw and shoulders in sultry, voluminous waves, looser and more sensual than she has ever worn it.

(She followed a YouTube tutorial on how to achieve the 'Victoria's Secret Angels' look, nearly braining herself several times with a large hairbrush, and still dizzy from all the hairspray she inhaled in the process.)

"You're going to look like you've been cast as the slut in the teen movie," Selyse barks, rather aptly, as she slouches past them, clutching her long cardigan about her thin shoulders. She shoots a baleful look at Melisandre. "But that's what happens when you borrow clothes from the slut in the teen movie—or at least, the slut from thirty years ago."

"You ought to be more sex-positive, Selyse," Melisandre says calmly. "It can be quite empowering to dress seductively at any age. Your husband didn't leave you for a younger woman, after all—just a more empowered one."

"Nothing so empowering as shriveled mutton dressing up as plump lamb," Selyse snorts, beetling down the stairs. "And I want my Celine back."

"I do not have your Celine," Melisandre calls with an air of martyrdom, then looks back at Sansa. "Well? Try it on."

(In spite of asking several times, no one has explained what Selyse's Celine is to Sansa—the closest she got was Lysa waving a hand around her face and head and saying, _oh, it's a whole thing_ —and she has given up trying to find out.)

Uncomfortable with Melisandre's too-intense gaze, Sansa slips back into the bathroom and takes off her silk georgette blouse, which is beautiful but isn't likely to attract the admiration of teenaged boys (what is her life anymore?), and shimmies into the camisole and tee—or at least, tries to. Her head gets stuck, she smacks into a cabinet and knocks her electric toothbrush into the toilet, and begins to sweat as she feels a seam tug against her armpit. "How is it?" Melisandre calls through the door, as, at last, breathless and flushed, Sansa pulls down the tee and stares at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

"Um," Sansa squeaks, staring at herself in a mix of horror and fascination, "I think it's... perfect?"

* * *

She's not nervous or anything.

Sansa carefully navigates the Princeton streets toward Robin's school. It's an unseasonably warm day, and were it not for the Halloween decor dotting the houses or the brilliant orange and crimson leaves, it could still be summer. It's perfect for her plan, as it means she can go coatless—though even alone in her car, Sansa feels self-conscious and foolish for how she is dressed, and longs to put on a coat, to pull her hair back, to wipe off some of this bronzer.

She's just nearing the school when her cellphone begins to ring. "Hello, this is Sansa Stark," she answers mechanically, in the professional, detached voice she uses with her clients.

"Hello, Sansa Stark," Arya deadpans, and Sansa snorts. "This is Arya Stark."

"Ha ha," Sansa says. "What did you need? I've only got a few minutes." Winter High's unfortunate dated facade is coming up, and a knot is forming in Sansa's gut.

"Busy bee, as usual," Arya remarks. "Well, Gendry and I decided to drive up to Princeton tonight—don't worry, we'll be back at your townhome before midnight—as I haven't seen Jon in a while, and I thought you could probably use a break from the Witches. I was thinking the four of us could grab a quick dinner and then we'd drive back down to DC. It's a beautiful day, and we both have the afternoon off from work."

Sansa's palm tingles beneath the bandage, tingles the way it did when Jon kissed it, and she feels her neck and cheeks flush. "Hello? Did I lose you—"

"—No, I'm still here," Sansa says quickly, smoothly. "That sounds wonderful."

(When she falls ill with food poisoning, dysentery, malaria, decapitation—whatever lie she comes up with—later, it will be more believable if she sounds excited at the prospect now.)

"Awesome. Well, I'll let you go—"

"—Thanks, bye, love you," Sansa says hastily, and ends the call. She will have to deal with that problem later, because she's got a much more pressing task ahead of her at the moment.

Time to pick Robin up from school.

The pick-up spot for students is next to the football field, as the front of the school is too crowded with long, careening school buses which teem with shrieking teenagers. It all looks a little different from her youth—the backpacks aren't as overstuffed; the kids look indefinably more sophisticated and yet younger than she ever felt—but there is still a surge of nostalgia. Sansa _loved_ school: she loved her color-coded binders and her perfect notes, she loved giggling with her friends at the cute boys they'd pass in the hall, she loved the fall bake sales and the highs and lows; she loved learning, she loved the different personalities of her teachers. She even loved the outcasts, like Jon (who was like some archetype from a John Hughes movie: dark and handsome, remote and detached, yet unexpectedly good at a sport that rendered boys as gods. Like a pauper-turned-prince, there was something romantic about how football had transformed Jon.)

(There was always something romance-tinged about Jon, from his dark clothes to the way his eyes had looked _that_ night, the way the rental tux had hung on his lean shoulders, the way his dark hair had hung about his jaw so messily.)

( _Why_ is she thinking about Jon Snow again?)

Sansa spots Robin among his peers, standing between the clumps of students lingering on the fringes of the football field. He's on his own, in purple sweatpants and a red Fair Isle sweater, white tube socks and brown suede pull-on sneakers, clutching his backpack straps, studiously ignoring jibes from a group of cool-looking boys nearby, who all have AirPods and matching smirks as they ask Robin questions that make his cheeks turn blotchy. Nearby, a group of dramatic girls—eyeliner and tights—look on in disdain for all of it. A tall blonde boy, clad in the Winter High football uniform, shouts something that makes Robin look up and flinch as the boy runs by.

Something catches the football player's attention—it's Jon.

He's wearing jeans and the coach's jacket she saw him in the other day, his dark hair hidden under a baseball cap. He shouts something at the football player that makes the boy scowl, and Sansa stifles a feeling of satisfaction that is swiftly followed by a clench of anticipation. She did not plan for Jon to see her like this... Whatever. Jon Snow doesn't mean anything to her.

(Her palm tingles.)

(It is surreal that just last night she was crouching in his kitchen, his lips to her palm.)

She checks her lipstick, fluffs her hair, and parks the Mini directly in the middle of the school traffic...and gets out of the car.

_Here goes nothing._

"Robin! Hey! Robin!" she calls, loud as she dares. She's channeling every flirty cheerleader stereotype in every teen movie she's ever seen, as she squeals and waves at Robin, catching his attention—as well as the attention of everyone around him.

Sansa is mostly a quiet person. Oh, she's always been outgoing, and good at making friends, but she has never been a loudmouth. She has never intentionally drawn attention to herself—and she certainly has never dressed in a revealing or attention-seeking manner. She is never ostentatious, she is never forward—and she is never, ever sexy. Even her Jimmy Choos are quiet, unobtrusive; secret elegance, only acknowledged by the insider's eye. Sansa is always a whisper, never a shout. She's always been told she is pretty, and she's even exploited that fact at times, but right now she feels like a fool...and Sansa Stark never makes a fool of herself. 

(Not anymore; not since high school.)

But as heads turn, everything happens in slow-motion, and she feels what it is like to be a shout for the very first time in a long time: she is baring more cleavage than she ever has, in her entire life, and she can feel her voluminous waves bouncing along with her cleavage as she makes a show of tossing her hair, waving her hand, demanding attention. Her tight white top dips low, revealing skin that hasn't seen the light of day in a very long time, and red lace straining.

(Is she actually doing this? She is actually doing this.)

She sees the blond football player turn to stare, jaw slack, as his teammates follow his gaze; she even sees one boy's left AirPod drop from his ear and into the grass, forgotten. The drama girls look between her and Robin in confusion and delight; Robin stares like a deer in the headlights, either not recognizing her or not processing that she is there for him, and Sansa laughs and waves again. "Robin! Hey! Ready to go?"

Just as she steps out onto the grass, she hears a loud _thwump_ —blond football player has caught a football to the face while staring at her. Jon blows the whistle.

"Eyes on the ball, Hardyng," Jon calls as the other players laugh dazedly, but they're staring at her too. The only one who isn't staring is Jon. Sansa resists the urge to try and catch his attention, because she doesn't want to be thrown off.

Luckily, Robin has finally come back to his body, and awkwardly hastens to meet Sansa on the grass. He opens his mouth, frog-like, a few times, but no sound comes out. Sansa slings an arm around his skinny shoulders, and leads him back to the cherry-red Mini, her skin burning with awareness.

(Still, there's a part of her that can't help but enjoy it. Maybe it wasn't earth-shattering, but just enough people saw Robin walk away with—if she does say so herself—a babe. They'll be wondering who she is, they'll be wondering why Robin knows her... Robin will have a new, inexplicable facet, perhaps just enough to give him the social boost he needs to start defending himself.)

"What—what's going on, Sansa?" Robin asks as they get in.

"I'm taking you shopping," Sansa informs him, starting the car. She can't help it—she risks a glance at the football field, at Jon's slim form, but he's not looking at her, and she tries not to let her heart sink just a tiny bit.

"Shopping? For what?"

"Oh, just this and that," she reassures him, pulling away from Winter High.

* * *

Two hours and many shopping bags later, it's dark out, and Sansa has learned more about Pokémon than she ever wanted to know. After a soft pretzel and soda, and a few minutes of probing questions, the floodgates opened, and Robin opened his soul to her. (His soul consists of Pokémon, YouTubers, and something called Warhammer. Oh, and a girl named Shireen, though Sansa has been careful not to ask directly about the girl, lest he clam up again.)

She pulls up to Lysa's house, the Halloween lights along the street painting the inside of the car, and hears her phone vibrate again with another text from Arya. It's nearly dinner time, and it is cutting things very close—she spent the whole shopping trip partly trying to come up with an excuse to get out of dinner with Arya, Jon, and the man she loves, but she's come up with nothing. They drove three hours, after all, and she knows no one else in the area. And she can't lie about being sick, either, in case Lysa blabs on her.

"...and the whole problem is that he's been canceled," Robin is saying feverishly, as she parks, "for what he said about the original series, but his comments were taken completely out of context." 

"That's ridiculous, didn't anyone interview him to understand why he said it?" Sansa puts in, hoping Robin can't tell she was distracted for a moment and has no idea what they're talking about.

"They did! But it just made a bigger mess, and now everyone in the Pokémon community is angry at him..." 

They get out of the car, clutching the many shopping bags of new clothes for Robin, and Sansa spots a silhouette on the porch.

Aunt Lysa is standing there, stiffly, her mouth pursed like a bullfrog. Jon is standing beside her, wearing a button-up shirt, his hair freshly washed, his unreadable gaze on the shopping bags. 

Robin abruptly clams up when he sees his mother, and Sansa realizes, only belatedly, how interfering this looks: not only is Sansa involving herself in Lysa's legal matters, she is also involving herself in Lysa's parenting. And although Lysa has been reasonably relaxed up to this point, there is a stiffness in her posture that reminds Sansa why her mother barely can bring herself to speak with her sister. Lysa is fine until she isn't; Lysa has a raging temper that makes her oscillate between echoing shrieks and sullen, furious silence; Lysa cannot usually be reasoned with.

Sansa's stomach drops. 

"Where have you been," Lysa demands in a hush as they reach the porch. Robin flushes and darts inside, in tears, leaving Sansa standing there with Jon and Lysa. She is uncomfortably aware that she is still in her 'costume,' and that it has grown quite cool; her skin prickles with gooseflesh. Lysa's gaze lingers on her tight shirt, on her too-big hair, and Sansa feels cheap, overbearing, and silly. She is both angry on Robin's behalf, and sad for Lysa, and it makes it hard to stand up for her choices. 

"Looks like she's been to H&M," Jon cuts in, peering at the bags she holds. "And Vans, I think." There's the slightest edge to his voice, as always—he sounds amused, a little sarcastic, and a little disdainful—and Lysa obviously can't tell where he is directing his snark. Before she can speak again though, Jon turns to her, looking at his watch. "I think we're going to be late if you don't hurry—I told Arya I'd drive you." 

Her excuses clog in her throat. He's doing her a favor, but if she backs out, she's got to stay home with a white-hot angry Lysa. 

(She must dine with the man she loves; she must watch her sister be with the man she loves.)

"Oh, thank you," she finally forces out. "Just let me, um, get changed. I'll be right down." 

Her mouth is dry, her face hot, as she walks past the two of them, the shopping bags making conspicuous crinkling noises as they smack in the doorframe on her way in. 

* * *

Five minutes later, she is climbing into the passenger side of Jon's truck. She has managed to brush out a lot of the hairspray and wipe off the bronzer, but her hair is still down and voluminous, though she is back in one of her own tasteful ensembles. Jon's truck smells like woodfire and gasoline. It's tidy but worn, and there's a toolbox on the floor of her side. 

"Just, um, you can kick that out of the way," he mutters, leaning over to her side to push the heavy box to the side, and as a result his head is awkwardly close to hers, his forearm briefly kissing her leg. 

"Thanks," Sansa mutters in turn, pulling away as she buckles herself in and Jon starts the car. "Do you know where we're going? Arya told me, but the texts sort of flew by when we were in the mall." 

"Yeah, it's this little bar off of Palmer Square," Jon replies. "A friend of mine works there, it's nice. Arya will like it." 

The silence swells and billows between them as they sit in Friday night traffic. A thousand things occur to Sansa to say, but in the wake of Lysa's fury, Sansa wonders if she is too foolish to be borne. And of course, there is this afternoon, and last night—and Jon's kiss—hanging between them. Jon cracks the window, and she worries that she has applied too much perfume, or that her hairspray is too strong, or perhaps she is in need of a shower. Just as with last night, she is acutely aware of the atoms between them, of how when Jon moves the steering wheel, his starched shirt crinkles slightly, enough that she can hear the noise, enough that she can imagine fabric moving against his lovely skin.

"Do you—" 

"What you did—oh, go on," Jon says hastily. 

"No, sorry, I didn't mean—what were you going to—"

"—Nothing, what did you want to ask?" 

She bites her lip. 

"Do you know Gendry?" 

God, but just saying his name electrifies her. She thinks of his blue eyes, of his tattoos, of the loving, patient way he smiles at Arya when she's not paying attention to him and is ranting about something; she thinks of how when he and Arya were first living together, she came home to find that he had put risers on their new bed, because she had been saying she wanted more storage for her sports equipment (he had been listening to her, he had done something unglamorous that mattered to her); she thinks of that moment, just a few days ago, when they might have embraced in some parallel universe. 

"Yeah, I've met him a few times." Jon glances at her, and is it her imagination, or is his look shrewd? "Why?"

"Oh, just wondering. I thought you were Robb's friend. I mean, more Robb's friend than Arya's," she says hastily. She wills herself to stop talking; in work she so easily utilizes silence, watches men rush to fill the silence, but with Jon she finds herself talking too much. She bites her lip, glances at him sidelong. But he doesn't rush to fill the silence; he cannot be played so easily. 

"I love both of them," he says after a moment. 

"But you're closest with Robb," she confirms, sensing that she is being weird, sensing that he can sense it, sensing that this evening is only going to go more off the rails from here and being unable, for some reason, to control the situation like she so infamously usually can. "I mean, of the two of them, Robb is your main friend," she continues babbling, wondering why she can't stop talking. 

"Are you nervous?" he blurts, glancing at her sharply.

"What? No, of course I'm not nervous. Why would I be nervous for dinner with my sister? I've just had a lot of caffeine today, and also, today was a kind of strange day." She forces herself to shut up again before she can dig this hole any further, and glances again at Jon in time to see his eyebrows flick up briefly. 

"That it was," he says dryly, and she resists the urge to grab the wheel, pull over, and shake him until he says something—anything, literally anything—about today. Or last night. Or what happened between them all those years ago. She'll take anything at this point, really. 

But it makes no difference, because they're in Palmer Square again, driving past Melisandre's psychic shop, and her palms are clammy, and from here she can spot Arya's red car parallel-parked on the street, her license plate reading 'NYMERIA' and her bumper sticker featuring a tyrannosaurus rex and the words ' _your stick-figure family was delicious_ ' distinctive even in the darkness. The bar is next to a J.Crew, and Sansa can picture Arya posing in front of the mannequins for Gendry, rolling her eyes at the tartan and puffer vests and chinos, and Gendry laughing. 

And there they are, waiting outside of the bar. Gendry's hands are shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket; Arya is bracing a foot against the wall, lacing up her worn hiking boots. Gendry is nodding at something she's saying, and their easy companionship is so lovely that it makes her chest ache. And then she realizes that Jon is looking at her, so she turns to him and pastes on a smile. 

"There they are!" she says brightly, feeling a little more like her usual self. In control, well-hidden behind a facade, safe. Invulnerable. Steel. She can do this. Jon raises his brows at her again, like he's asking a question, but she doesn't want to answer, and besides, it's none of his business. 

She can do this. She can do anything. Of course she can sit across a tiny, dimly-lit table from the man she loves for over an hour, her heartbreak on display for a man who thinks she is an idiot and an asshole, a man who apparently turns her into someone with less social grace than Robin. No problem. It's fine. 

(Spoiler: it is not fine.)


	6. the lovers, reversed

"JON!"

Arya is a blur as she darts over to hug Jon; when she lets him go, he and Gendry do that awkward greeting that reserved men do, part one-armed embrace and part hand-clasp, muttering something like 'good to see you, man' without making eye contact. 

There is a strange tension that Sansa detects immediately, as she always does. Arya and Gendry are not meeting each other's eyes; what she read as easy companionship earlier, from the safety of Jon's car, feels like taut anger. They have clearly argued, and the air is pregnant with things left unsaid. She never imagined that Arya and Gendry even _could_ argue—she assumed that fights would be started by Arya, and ended by Gendry. But whatever argument they are in the midst of right now is clearly still going, and by the stiffness in Gendry's posture and the volume of Arya's voice, it is clearly not ending any time soon.

"Shall we?" she asks the group with a gesture to the door, artfully dodging the moment where she might have to embrace Gendry. She is on display; she senses that Jon is watching. It is not helping that gnawing sense of tension.

"We shall, my lady," Arya says in a terrible British accent, with an exaggerated bow. She's just being Arya—she never can resist poking fun at Sansa's politeness; Sansa knew this was coming—but it stings more than usual, and there's more of an edge to Arya's teasing than usual. Why can't she just be hiding in her attic room at the witches' house, with a large glass of wine and her books, periodically taking a break to peruse Arya's social media for fragments of Gendry? Or perhaps tucked away with her laptop and a strong cocktail, researching Stannis Baratheon and swiping right on men on the dating apps, in the vain hope of finding one with remarkable blue eyes?

(The key being that she really would like to be alone and inebriated, rather than in this situation, right now.)

Gendry laughs, but Jon doesn't, and Arya looks embarrassed at Jon's lack of reaction.

"My friend Val saved a table for us," Jon says, holding the door open for them. Sansa follows Arya and Gendry inside, glancing at Jon as she passes him, and something makes them both look away.

The bar is modeled after cozy old British pubs, with white-washed walls and low, dark rafters and squashy leather-covered booths. The Princeton set is visible: parents in cashmere and pearls, their children thick-haired and glowing, sit at booths and tables around the pub, sipping pints or tasteful white wine—discussing boats, probably. There are some locals, too, in Patagonia and North Face, and they wave to Jon as the four of them enter.

And then a waitress comes over to them, honey-blonde and long-limbed, and Sansa will later identify this as the moment that the evening was ruined beyond repair.

This is Val, Sansa realizes. She has a particular aura of cool that has always eluded Sansa. The way she is wearing her wrinkled chambray shirt—casually unbuttoned to reveal her collarbone, the sleeves rolled up and the hem tucked into her high-waisted black jeans—makes Sansa feel like she needs to rush out and buy one immediately, though on her it would read more soccer-mom.

"You're all over here," she says with a wave at Jon.

(Have they slept together? There is a very physical ease between the two of them, evident when Jon follows close behind her.)

(In spite of the tension, she and Arya glance at each other with raised brows, clearly wondering the same thing, but then they each look away quickly.)

(What is going on with Arya? If she is fighting with Gendry, why is she being so strange toward Sansa?)

"Best seat in the house," Gendry says appreciatively as Val leads them to a table in the corner. It's the coziest booth, pressed up against the mullioned windows with a pretty view of the square. Sansa notices that both men look away when Val leans over to light the votive candle on the table; she notices her sister flushing at her neck, her eyes bright—all warning signs that something is bubbling beneath the surface.

"There you go. I'll be back to take your drinks," Val says, scattering menus on the table and leaving the four of them to navigate the next hurdle: who sits where?

In the end, Arya and Gendry sit on one side and Jon and Sansa sit on the other, cementing the feeling that this is a poorly-arranged double-date that apparently is making no one happy. Sansa sits against the window, aware of how the booth cushion dips and pulls away from her as Jon slides in beside her. His clean scent fills the air. 

"Girlfriend material?" Arya teases Jon with a smirk, her voice a little too loud. Jon doesn't look up from scanning the menu.

"No."

"Ah, too bad," Gendry says, and Arya shoots him a look. To Sansa's surprise, he returns it steadily, almost daringly.

"Yeah, she's like, super hot," Arya agrees in a tight voice, watching Gendry. Jon still doesn't look up from the menu. 

A heaviness settles over Sansa; there is an unhappy thought brewing that she does not want to acknowledge, that she's not ready to accept, so she focuses on her own menu too. Alcohol, that's what she needs. She keeps thinking of Melisandre saying, _missed opportunities,_ in her spooky, throaty voice, and it is making her feel inconvenient things. At the moment it seems so easy to imagine some parallel universe, in which she took the opportunity that she missed in this universe.

"Hey. Know what you want?" Val saunters up to them again with her notepad. Even her wrists are lovely. There is something both waifish and strong about her; she looks like she should be cast in some moody drama set in New England, where she wears lots of heavy coats with sleeves too long for her, and men pine for her, and she sits in cold cars with her cheeks rosy and her breath misting prettily around her, blurring her features. Jon should be in this movie, too, the brooding, stubbled hero of the Lifetime movie—the only man that could ensnare such a mysterious creature.

Sansa hates her, and she suspects Arya does too.

"I'll have straight whiskey," Arya announces, snapping her menu shut.

"Guess I'm driving," Gendry mutters.

"Yep, guess you are," Arya says archly. "What are you having, Sansa? Appletini?"

"House white, actually," Sansa corrects with a snap.

"Oh, it's crap, you'll hate it," Val warns her. "I'll put it on your check but substitute it with something good, don't worry." She jots something down on her notepad and Sansa feels annoyed that she wants to like Val.

"The usual," Jon says to Val with a glance up at her that reads as casually intimate.

(They have definitely, definitely slept together.)

"I'll have a coke," Gendry says wryly, but it comes off as petulant rather than teasing, and Sansa watches her sister flush again. Val's blonde brows arch and her eyes widen, in a subtle _what the fuck_ sort of way.

"I'll be back with your orders," she promises, and then the four of them are left alone again, in the thickest tension that Sansa has ever witnessed.

The people-pleaser in her, the one that just wants everything to be nice and easy, is writhing in agony at the tension—Arya seems to be quietly boiling over; Gendry is resentful and defensive; and Jon seems either willfully ignorant or actually oblivious as he peruses the menu.

"So! How are the witches?" Gendry makes a pitiful stab at normalcy, and meets her eyes across the table. Her heart twists. Missed opportunities; one night in particular, one night she has been trying not to think of for so long. Melisandre's words brought it all back. If she had taken that opportunity, would it be Sansa in Arya's place tonight, sitting beside Gendry and feeling jealous of Val? Would Arya be the one sitting beside Jon; would Arya be the one whose palm Jon had kissed?

"Not great," Sansa admits, looking away from those remarkable blue eyes. She considers diving into the details of the witches—Stannis Baratheon, the burial grounds, Robin—but decides to keep it light. "It's so lucky for them that Jon's nearby. I seriously don't know how they'd manage without him."

"Lucky for Lysa's kid that Sansa's here," Jon deflects easily, glancing at Sansa. "Robin's always been a little odd, to be honest, and there's not much I've been able to do for him. He needs all the help he can get."

"I took him shopping today, for normal clothes," Sansa explains, and Arya scoffs.

"Oh, yeah, a makeover fixes everything."

"Appearances matter," Sansa shoots back, even as she marvels how, at her age, she can still get into a catfight with her sister.

"Not as much as you think they do," Arya fires back.

"They do in high school; they matter a lot," Jon says coolly, surprising Sansa by coming to her defense.

They are saved by Val's return, and Sansa almost wishes she could put in her order for her next drink now—she takes a long gulp of her wine, probably too long.

"How about we say you're both right," Gendry suggests after Val has left and Sansa has chugged half her glass of wine. The heat of the wine settles in the pit of her stomach. Something in his tone annoys her, and it's a strange experience. She has never been annoyed by Gendry before, but at the moment, his peacekeeping smacks of condescension. Arya snorts; she has also chugged a large part of her whiskey.

"Oh thank god for you, Gendry," she mutters, taking another long swig.

"Everything alright, Arya?" Jon asks quietly, but his voice is firm, cool, a brick wall in shadow. "You seem like you'd rather not be here."

It is oddly confrontational.

"I'm great," Arya scoffs. "Dunno what your problem is. I'm having a great time." She finishes off her drink. "Where is that blonde, anyway? I need a refill."

"Shouldn't we order—" Gendry begins, then closes his mouth with a snap at the murderous look on Arya's face.

"Gendry's right, let's figure out what we all want to eat—" Sansa tries, but Arya lets out a callous laugh.

"Gendry's right, let's all be sunshine and rainbows, I'm Sansa Stark and I'm always perfect and I get everything I want!" Arya mimics in a ridiculous voice, tossing her hair.

"What is your problem?" Sansa hisses. Arya rolls her eyes, but they are bright with the threat of tears.

"You're so sensitive all the time. Can't you take a joke? God."

Jon looks like he's about to speak, but Val sidles up with the caution of a traumatized lion tamer approaching a cranky lion.

"Um. So. Know what you all want to eat?" she hedges, glancing at Jon.

"I'll have a burger, and Sansa will probably have your lowest-carb water," Arya says, tossing the menu down. "Oh, and I need another drink."

It is ridiculous, but Sansa almost feels like she might cry. She has not had this kind of tension with Arya in many, many years; she forgot how much it could hurt.

"Arya," Jon cuts in, "maybe we should all do this another night."

"Why are you protecting her?" Arya snaps, visibly bristling. "Why is everything always about Sansa? Why is everyone always in love with Sansa?"

"What?" Sansa sputters. "He's trying to help, Arya."

"Yes, help you, the damsel in distress, just like Gendry did, because you guys can never resist a damsel, can you?"

Arya is crying now. Val says maybe she should come back, but no one acknowledges it, and she backs away. People are starting to look in their direction, now; Sansa feels like she might throw up.

"I think he's trying to help _you,_ actually," she whispers, so conscious of the stares.

"No, he's trying to save you from me," Arya laughs wetly, "just like he saved you that time in high school; and Gendry's trying to save you, too, once again. Ugh, don't pretend to be confused—I know all about the party."

Gendry blanches and Sansa's stomach turns.

Missed opportunities.

(How could Melisandre have known about that night, in her reading? Was it just a lucky guess? After all, who doesn't mourn a missed opportunity or two?)

"Nothing happened," Gendry insists in a low voice to Arya, "I _told_ you. Bran was exaggerating—"

"—What was there to exaggerate? You guys almost kissed. Probably if he hadn't walked in on you, you would have fucked." Arya wipes her cheek with the heel of her hand, so reminiscent of her as a child that it makes Sansa's heart hurt. Her face is burning. "He told us today. Right before we got into Princeton, we were on the phone with him, and he just casually mentions he thought you guys would end up together," she chokes out. "And I'm supposed to be okay with this—"

"Time to go." Jon stands up abruptly. Sansa sees him slip a bill to Val with a look; and then Gendry is pulling Arya out of the booth and she is crying in earnest now. Bile scalds Sansa's throat; she cannot believe she isn't crying yet. She feels as though she has been slapped. Missed opportunities, missed opportunities... And here she is, watching the man she loves carry her crying sister out of a restaurant.

On the street, Palmer Square is bustling with people and students on their way to dinners, to drinks, and it feels as though they are on a stage. "Arya, sleep it off," Jon says rather harshly, and Arya rolls her eyes, struggling against Gendry's hold.

"Let go of me," she seethes, and it is only now that Sansa finds her voice.

"We would never—how dare you—" Sansa stammers. "I would _never_ do that to you—"

"—Wouldn't you?" Arya laughs wildly. "You look at him like he's everything, and now I know why. I never wanted to believe it, but now I know."

"Arya—"

"—No!"

She breaks free of Gendry's hold and begins storming down the sidewalk, posture rigid, before breaking off into a run, leaving the three of them there on the sidewalk. Gendry mops his face. 

"I told her we should have just canceled," he mutters. His hand drops and he looks back at Sansa, and her skin prickles. There is a burning in her chest because she is aware that in some ways they are now at a crossroads. Her secret is out, and the opportunity has returned to her, a shivering fragile thing that she might take in her hands and breathe life back into. She could tell Gendry not to go after Arya; she could take back what she sacrificed—

"Aren't you going to go after her?" Jon asks suddenly, breaking the spell. Gendry startles as though he's been slapped. 

"Yeah, yeah," he says vaguely. He clears his throat. "Sorry, guys," he says, his eyes lingering on Sansa. "Sorry," he says one last time, before turning and starting to jog down the street. 

It is cold, and people are still peering at them with nosy interest, and Sansa realizes her eyes are wet. She crosses her arms over her chest and looks at Jon, who is watching her, biting his lip. She is humiliated, but she can't help but feel like he was the one person who was genuinely on her side, earlier; she does not want to let go of the one person who was willing to bat for her (since Gendry clearly just wanted the conversation to end). 

"You probably don't want to hear it, but I'd like to explain that." 

Jon studies her, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, head tilted. "Dinner? On me?" she suggests, feeling a little desperate. "But maybe not at that restaurant," she adds, "because I'm not sure my pride can handle walking back in there." 

"Alright. Dinner and an explanation," Jon agrees after a moment, and Sansa lets out a sigh of relief. 

They wordlessly walk around the corner, to another bar. It's Mediterranean-themed, and has a cheery, warm glow. It's packed, so they find a spot at the long bar, on the very end at the corner, and Sansa sits on one face of the corner and Jon sits on the other, so that their knees brush when they climb onto the high stools, though neither acknowledge it. It's loud, and jarring to be in such a pleasant environment after such a crushing encounter. Sansa has the vague awareness of women looking jealously at her, and she wants to laugh at them. They have no understanding of the circumstances of this outing; they do not understand how much this is so _not_ a date. 

"So who is Val?" Sansa asks after they order drinks, watching Jon's mouth curve into a half-smile that is decidedly private. 

"A good friend," he says simply. 

(They have _definitely_ slept together.)

"Well, I feel like I owe her," Sansa admits, deciding not to pursue that line of questioning any further. "God. That was so awkward."

She groans and covers her face for a moment. When she lowers her hands, Jon looks like he's trying not to laugh, and he pushes his hair back. Then she's laughing, too, and then their heads are bowed as they try to pull themselves together. 

"Yeah, I probably owe her a beer," Jon agrees after the laughter has died down. 

They order food from the bartender—she isn't even sure what she picks; her mind is still elsewhere—and then they are alone again, amid the rush of people, and glasses of wine are set before them. 

"Thanks for defending me, by the way. About Robin and the...makeover, I guess." 

"Yeah, sure," Jon says awkwardly, looking down and picking at the grain of the wood counter. "I mean, I wanted to tell you earlier, but I guess we ran out of time," he continues, still not looking at her, "but what you did for him today—it was a good thing." 

"Really? You think it'll help?" She hates how needy she sounds but she's desperate for validation at the moment. 

"Yeah, yeah I do," he says, nodding, still not looking at her. "You seemed really uncomfortable when you came to pick him up; it was pretty obvious you were doing it for him. I don't know, I just—it was ...generous." 

They are both embarrassed now; Sansa has the feeling that she might cry again so she drinks her chilled wine to quell the feeling. 

"Thanks," she says when her throat is no longer too tight to speak. She will reflect later on the fact that Jon was clearly watching when she thought he wasn't; for now she doesn't have the capacity to think too hard on it.

They are quiet for a moment, as the tension builds, and she recognizes that she can no longer put this off. Her secret is out; the jig is up. "So, I promised you an explanation. I might as well give it to you, though I don't really know how to start with it. I would never intentionally try to take anything from Arya, obviously. Nothing actually happened, I want to make that clear right away."

"I didn't think anything had," Jon says, and she feels a burst of warmth, one that propels her to really begin in earnest.

"Well, so, Arya and Gendry have been together a long time," she begins.

"Yeah, something like ten years, right?" 

"On and off, since college. I had only heard about him from her when she was mad at him, and had the vague awareness of some artsy hipster guy. It seemed like they were constantly breaking up then getting back together again, though of course, being Arya, she insisted they weren't a thing that whole time. I took her word for it, that he was just a guy she was keeping around for entertainment, since she never sounded serious about him and always seemed angry with him. I should have known, but honestly, Arya and I weren't that close growing up."

"I know," Jon says, surprising her. "Robb used to talk about it, and she did, too." 

She cringes at the thought of what they might have said about her—all things that Jon's own experiences with her would likely validate. 

"Well, the point being, I didn't understand her the way I do now, so I didn't know she was, like, in love with him. And I hadn't met him yet, so I didn't have a face for a name or anything. Anyway, Robb threw a huge housewarming party when he got his first real apartment—not a studio, not a rented bedroom in a house with five other guys, but a real apartment with his own appliances—and we were all invited." 

"Yeah, I couldn't make it," Jon recalls. "He said it was a crazy night."

"It was huge, spilling out of the apartment building. He was in huge trouble with the landlord afterwards." They share a grin over Robb. "I had just broken off a relationship and was feeling sort of bitter and lonely." 

(She wants to laugh, now, at her very very young self. At the time she had very dramatically pondered whether she would ever find love. So many years later, that fear is beginning to seem very real, and she wonders if she can trace all the time she's wasted since then to what happened—or rather, what _didn't_ happen—that night.) 

She can remember the chaos of the party—Robb is one of those people who can befriend anyone, and all walks of life had shown up to the party. "It was an overwhelming party, so I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water and to get away from the chaos. I had given Robb three framed prints to hang in his kitchen a week before, and someone had pulled them down from the wall and smashed the glass. Gendry was crouched in the kitchen, trying to save them." 

"Sensitive artist," Jon guesses dryly, and Sansa cannot help but laugh, because he's right. In the wake of her Georgetown boyfriend, all pressed chinos and varnish and ambition, Gendry had seemed so authentic, so caring, so gentle. She had spotted him there against the wall, kneeling on the tiled floor, trying to piece the frames back together, angular hands and tattoos tracing down his strong arms. She had been a little bit drunk and very sad, and she had knelt beside him and over the shards of glass their eyes had met, and his remarkable eyes had bewitched her for the very first time. Bright blue like warm water, they had seemed like her escape. 

"I didn't know who he was at first, and he didn't know who I was. But he knew the artist who had done the prints, so we talked about the artist for a while, then decided the frames couldn't be salvaged, but we ended up just sitting against the wall there, talking, for probably an hour. He was so nice, so reserved, so interesting. And just when we were about to kiss, Bran came in and said his name and I realized who he was, and..."

She trails off as their food is placed in front of them, though she has never been less hungry. The plate of salmon seems untenable; the garnish of dill ridiculous. Jon seems similarly nauseated by his own dish, but neither comments on it. 

"So you think if Bran hadn't come in," Jon begins at last, moving food around on his plate without eating it, "you and he would..." 

"I don't know," she begins, but the wine and the adrenaline have loosened her tongue; if this is a confession, she might as well do it the real way. "Well, yes, I do know. I'm in love with him, and I always have been. If I hadn't learned who he was, we probably would have kissed. I don't know how he feels about me, now, but that night it seemed like the start of something—until I learned he was Arya's, and he learned I was her sister. Neither of us felt comfortable pursuing it, after that revelation, and by the time I saw him again, they had gotten back together and it seemed real this time." 

Jon is watching her. 

"What do you love about him?" 

It's not the reaction she expected. 

"He's..." she struggles to answer. "He's so...sweet. And his eyes... they're so warm." 

"He's nice and has nice eyes," Jon ticks off, nodding. "What else?"

"Are you making fun of me?" 

"So far you could also be describing my dog, Sansa," Jon says, and she flushes. "Look," he begins, shifting, "it's none of my business. But I know both of you, and you guys basically have nothing in common. You're both polite, I guess, and you both know a thing or two about art. What I do know about you is that you have a tendency to romanticize people." 

"Don't mince words on my account," she says, meeting Jon's steady gaze, and he arches his brows. 

"You're not a damsel, you never have been, so I won't," he says evenly. "But we both know that you do this." 

_That_ night lingers, once again, a ghostly spectre of all of her flaws. Sansa drains her glass of wine. 

"I feel like I'm getting a talking-to from an over-involved, concerned teacher," she muses, and is gratified to hear Jon's short laugh. "Which is _your_ tendency, by the way. We both know that you do this." 

"Get over-involved? Yeah, I know," he says, and he finishes his own glass of wine. "Believe me, I know."

Sansa pays, though Jon tries to get her to split the bill, and they leave their empty wine glasses and untouched food. Jon doesn't want to drive as he's had wine, so they stop by his truck and fetch a coat for Sansa to borrow, and they walk back to their street. 

They are both quiet, as they move further from the hustle and bustle of Palmer Square and deeper into the suburbs, until the only noise is that of the wind through the falling leaves and the hum of the occasional car driving past them, and their own shoes striking the pavement. The night is blue darkness and warm squares of light from each house glow like amber; the air smells like fire and dead leaves. The coat Jon has given her is an old hoodie, and it smells like him, and the worn jersey feels soft as a lover's touch through the thin georgette of her blouse. 

"It's funny," Sansa says after a moment, as they duck under the low branch of a maple hanging over a wrought-iron fence, "that Arya feels like I get everything I want. Lately I've been feeling like I get nothing that I actually want." 

"Does anyone feel like they get what they want?" Jon wonders. 

It's a good question. Sansa feels like Arya is the one who has everything; yet Arya thinks otherwise. 

"What do you want that you don't have?" Sansa asks now, because she cannot resist tugging on the thread that Jon has left for her, the thread leading into the depths of his soul. Jon does that laugh again—short, dry, almost a scoff. 

"A lot," he admits. Maybe it's the wine talking; he is not someone who typically leaves himself vulnerable, palms-up, like this. "I should be more grateful for everything I do have. But I think that's another tendency of mine."

"To brood?" she teases. 

(She is realizing that they are nearing their street; she is also realizing that she does not want this walk to end.)

"Yeah. I think part of me will always be that sulky teenager," he confesses, shaking his head. "Always noticing what others have, always noticing where I'm coming up short." 

"But you still haven't told me specifically what it is that you want," she insists, and Jon bites his lip, like he's measuring his words.

They turn onto their street, and pass by the old abandoned Victorian, and Sansa comes to an abrupt halt. "Oh my god, is there someone in there?" she hisses, grabbing at Jon's arm without thinking. She is positive she saw a silhouette in the third-storey window—yet when she peers there again, the window is dark. 

They look at each other, and she drops his arm sheepishly. "Sorry."

"I can't imagine anyone could get to the third storey," Jon reassures her, as they continue walking. "That house is decaying like crazy; you'd fall through the floor." 

Now they are at Lysa's house. The front windows glow pink, and she can hear the Enya from here. She turns to face Jon in front of the steps, and slips out of his jacket. He takes it from her, and then they are both laughing again. 

"Well. This was a night." 

Jon's pretty lips twist into a half-smile as he looks down at his jacket. 

"That's one way of putting it," he says. "Thanks for dinner." 

"Thanks for listening," she counters. "Guess I'll have to call Arya tomorrow." 

"Yeah, don't do it tonight," Jon agrees. "Give her some time to cool off." 

They avoid each other's eyes, because the enormity of tonight is too much. 

"Anyway, good night."

"Night." 

She turns away and hastens up the stairs; she hears the gravel crunch as Jon crosses the road to his own house. At the front door, she pauses and turns to look back. She sees a shimmering silhouette flash in the third storey window of the abandoned Victorian, but then she blinks, and it's gone again. 

When she looks at Jon's house, he is standing on his own porch, looking back at her, so they wave, and she turns away again. 

Melisandre's words, for some reason, are ringing in her ears yet again as she opens the screen door. _The question is, Sansa Stark, are you listening to what the universe is trying to tell you?_


End file.
